Mud
Connecticut College
May 2016
A directing and acting capstone project.
directed by Teresa Cruz
written by Maria Irene Fornes
production design by Samantha Butler
stage management by Grace Mennell
lighting and sound design by Rebecca Brill-Weitz
advising by Kenny Prestininzi
photos by Rebecca Brill-Weitz
performed by Mattie Barber-Bockelman,
Spencer Lutvak, David Socolar
Mae lives in bleak poverty with her childhood playmate, pig-farmer Lloyd.
She attempts schooling herself in reading and arithmetic, because she wants to believe
there is more to life than struggling to survive. When Lloyd becomes ill, Mae brings
Henry home with her to read a health clinic pamphlet’s difficult medical language.
The ensuing love / hate triangle that brews between the three creates a toxic environment.
Mae realizes she must escape the men who depend upon her if she is to
rise above common baseness and not die in the mud.
Mud White/Mud Black
As an experiment, the actors who played Lloyd and Henry switched from one night to the other. Motivated by a hunger of college seniors wanting to explore their craft, the choice created two threads of the same production. Together we tackled this challenge by creating tableauxs within the story to move through, inspired by Fornes’ “White Outs” written into Mud’s stage directions that call for a flash and a freeze between each scene. We worked with Action Theater practices to create snapshots for each of our versions of Mud. Also featured below arer early developmental collages that the director and designer created to draw out the visual world and discover the physical elements of the play.
