By Laura McCann

FOR THE COLLEIGIAN

According to the Oxford dictionary, the term "cloud nine" means a state of extreme happiness.

This week, the Penn State School of Theatre is taking the term to a whole new level when it performs the 1979 play Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill, beginning Nov. 15 at the Citizen's Bank Theatre and running through Dec. 9.

For the play, Penn State brought in New York-based director Tyler Marchant, who most recently served as the associate artistic director at the Off-Broadway theatre, Primary Stages, in New York City.

"If you're looking for a play that makes you laugh and also makes you squirm in your seat, then this is the play for you." Marchant said.

Marchant said he feels the transition to directing in a college show was an easy adjustment for him because he's used to new environments.

But for the student cast, he believes it may have been a little different.

"It was perhaps slightly more difficult for the students [to have me direct] because they are a close group. But this is a chance for them to work with someone who is in the profession, so it's a great opportunity. And they are a great group, a very talented group, and they made it easy to come in and get to work," Marchant said.

One of those talented students is Quetta Carpenter (graduate-theatre).

Carpenter said the Penn State School of Theatre has a professional director come to Penn State each semester for the third year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) show, and this year it was Marchant.

"It's great, he's a real professional," Carpenter said. "He knows the show, and he has a real passion for the show."

Cloud Nine is a comedy that focuses on issues of class, sex and race set in colonial Africa in the glory days of Queen Victoria.

It is about relationships -- those between men and women, men and men and women and women.

By employing racial and gender cross-casting, the play forces its audience to use its imagination and open its mind to these issues addressed throughout the play.

"It's a play that challenges our expectations of how we perceive manliness and how a man should act, and womanliness and how a woman should act," Marchant said.

Marchant also said Cloud Nine is a play that challenges stereotypes and described the story as "kinda sexy."

"It's basically a fun roller coaster full of nervous laughter and questions that are not usually addressed," he said.

The cast is made up of seven theatre majors, both graduate and undergraduate.

They have all been involved with numerous productions at the university, though few have required them to cross-dress.

According to Marchant, the most difficult part of the play for the actors was this switch of sexes.

In the first act, most of the cast members are playing a different sex than the one they play in the second act.

Marchant said the whole purpose is to make the audience question perceptions of gender roles.

Carpenter said she plays the character Maude in the first act, and then changes to playing Lynn in the second act.

She said she thinks that portraying two different characters is challenging.

"It's kind of strange," Carpenter said. "To do them both in the same day, it's a little jarring. You get 10 minutes to switch gears. I think we all looked for parallels between our characters so we can change instantly."

Marchant said his favorite aspect of the play dealt with its many facets and complexities.

"It's not just a play where you can sit back and relax," he said. "It's very entertaining, but it constantly asks the audience to go with it. There are women dressed as men and men dressed as women. It challenges what we see as normal and what we see as right and wrong. Then it goes a step further to ask why."

Marchant said Cloud Nine is a play that challenges everyone involved -- actors, directors and designers alike -- but also, and perhaps most importantly, it challenges its audience.

Throughout the play questions are raised, attacked and thrown around, only to be abandoned without any definite conclusions drawn.

Carpenter said she liked that the play didn't necessarily get "summed up" at the end.

Marchant hopes that by the end, if it has not surprised its audience, enticed them, aroused them or maddened them, that it has at least moved them.

"What's tricky is how to make the audience feel uncomfortable but make them laugh," Marchant said.