Chelsea L. McDowell

Reporter

 After an 11-year run with CSU Bakersfield, Theatre Director Maria-Tania Bandes Becerra Weingarden went out with a bang by presenting an original take on Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” to the Doré Theatre.

 “This production flips the play on its head by switching the genders of the characters,” the play program stated.

 The male protagonist socialites Earnest and Algernon were played by actresses Susannah Rose Vera, senior Theatre major, and Taylor Dawn Clark, junior English major, respectively.

  Second-year Business Administration major Trenton Benet and English major Garrett Willis portrayed the eager-to-marry love interests, Cecily and Gwendolyn, correspondingly.

 Inspired by Wilde’s social commentary on the state of marriage that shaped the 123-year-old play, Weingarden decided her final production with CSUB would be experimental.

 “I think it does do some interesting things with the gender,” Weingarden said. “I don’t know if it works 100 percent, but I think it does definitely make us reflect on things in a different way.”

 While the play may have marked the end of an era for Weingarden, it was a first for Senior Theatre major Stephanie Jean Schmidt, who acted as stage manager.  Schmidt is an actor who agreed to take on the tasks of the stage manager in order to become better-rounded in the world of theatre.

 “I definitely had so much fun [stage managing] for the show,” Schmidt said. “The best part is when you start tech week.”

 Schmidt explained that tech week is the week before the show opens, when costumes are added and light and sound come together.

 The experiment in theatre was not without its trials and errors.

 “The characters in the play, in their original form, question the stereotypes of men and women by going against the conventional roles,” the program stated.

 In the gender-reversed version of the play, the characters keep their names and actions. The feminized John Worthing remained called John—until she learned that her birth name was in fact Earnest— and proposed to her darling Gwendolyn.

 “The problem is we have the genders reversed, and so I fell into the trap of, well I need to be feminine,” Willis said. “So that itself was a challenge.”

 Another obstacle for the cast was the accent. Actors had to practice performing in English dialects that were much different from their own.

 “The Importance of Being Earnest” was also the last CSUB main stage production for Senior Theatre major Phoebe Pyne. She portrayed the feminine Rev. Canon Chasuble. Making sure she had the accent down correctly was her main concern, along with memorizing her lines, when it came her turn to speak.

 “[The accent] is something we’ve been working on a lot throughout this entire production,” Pyne said.

 To understand the wit of Wilde’s playwriting, junior Psychology major Kaelah Stevens would suggest watching the play more than once. She saw the play three times.

 “I think the more you watch it the more you can understand. You catch jokes that you didn’t catch the first time,” Stevens said.

 The play premiered on March 8 and closed March 18 after a Sunday matinée.

 Schmidt would like people to know that the Theatre welcomes all students.

 “The Theatre department has shows every year, we have at least one show every semester … we don’t just have theatre people in the theatre department, anyone on campus can audition for a show,” Schmidt said.