The novel The Hours has already been made into a film, but it was Ted Chylack who saw its potential for the stage.
Tonight at 8 in 111 Forum, No Refund Theatre will present The Hours, directed by Chylack (senior-film).
"It's actually not a play, but he made it one," said Bridgid Zvirblis (senior-communication sciences and disorders), assistant director for the production.
The Hours, originally a novel written by Michael Cunningham, interconnects the lives of the three main female characters in Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway. In 2002, screenwriter David Hare tailored Cunningham's novel for a movie, The Hours, starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. From this film, Chylack assembled his own theater-ready version.
There are three central female roles and the audience gets to know everything about them in a day, Chylack said.
The performance space is divided into three distinct settings.
"Virginia Woolf is writing, Laura Brown is reading and Clarissa Vaughan is acting," Zvirblis said.
Chylack's play, like the film, portrays Woolf on the day she began writing Mrs. Dalloway in the 1920s, Chylack said. Johnna Scrabis (junior-English), who plays Woolf, said this is her first NRT drama.
"It was hard to get into the mindset of Virginia," Scrabis said, adding it was difficult to think like an author and someone who is suicidal. "I have always done comedies. It's weird not to have laughter and to have silence. But the laughter backstage makes up for it."
Chylack said The Hours stays true to the film script-wise, though some characters were cut out.
In the play, Brown is played by Molly Kline (junior-secondary education and English), whose character is trying to maintain the perfect 1950s housewife lifestyle and also happens to be reading Woolf's novel, Zvirblis said.
Vaughan, played by Sarah Ameigh (senior-sociology and advertising), is a contemporary representation of the Mrs. Dalloway created in Woolf's story 80 years ago.
Though the plot revolves around these three women, there are seven cast members, and some of them play more than one role, Chylack said.
"They have to jump from one character to the next and managed beautifully," he said.
The Hours will also be showing at 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday in 111 Forum. Admission is free.
