The play is inspired by Mephistopheles, which is a character from a classical play, “A Tragical History of Doctor Faustus” written by Christopher Marlowe, where a guy summons the demon, Mephistopheles.
The play, “Mephistopheles on His Knees,” will be running April 12 through April 14 every night at 7:30 p.m. at the University of Wyoming Buchanan Center for Performing Arts Studio Theatre.
“It just started with: ‘Oh I wanna sit down and write today,’ which is really cool as it becomes this thing,” Daniel Daigle, director and play write of “Mephistopheles on His Knees,” said.
Daigle created this play through a writing exercise done in his free time.
“The tragical history of Dr. P. is one of my favorite classical plays and so I had this idea which kind of just started as a little writing exercise, [which] I was doing to fill some time,” Dagiel said. “Where it was the story of someone who starts to sing a song and then he stops, and the song keeps going. This was like a haunting. That will be a fun to play, with that and then it became a demon that was haunting this guy and I was just like Mephistopheles, what a great demon. So, I choose Mephistopheles for that. That’s kind of how Mephistopheles became the character that he is in the show.”
The tickets are five dollars, which are available at the BCPAs box office as well as online.
“It all started as I sat down and [thought] ‘Oh, I’ll just write a little scene about this,’ and then I liked the scene so I wrote another scene and then I wrote another scene and it just kinda kept building on it,” Daigle said.
Daigle worked on the script for about a year and a half. Daigle brought his draft to the Associated Students of Performing Arts, an RSO on campus, which provides creation and performance opportunity to students outside of what the department of theatre and dance is able to provide.
Patrick Konesko, professor at the department of theatre and dance, said, “It really represents the chance for students to move from in the room to the ‘expert’ in the room on their project, which is an exciting thing as they are going to move into their careers.”
Every year, the RSO provides 40 hours during a theatre and dance festival to come up with a whole choreographed dance piece or write and produce a full scene of 5 to 10 minutes. Every year the RSO offers a student production opportunity, where the students get to submit their work. From the production and direction of the show to the design, lights and sound; it is all carried out by students. While choosing the work, the board has a sit down to look at all the potential options and decide the best one.
“Then all the last semester I spent figuring out times when the show is going to happen, figuring out who, which student I wanted to design for the show, and then earlier this semester I had auditions so I sat down, students came in, they did monologues for me [and after callbacks] I picked the four, who are in the show,” Daigle said.
Fifty cents from the $5 ticket will go to the box office for processing fees and the remaining will go straight to the ASOPA for the future production of more student shows so that the committee can buy more write up pieces, props for the show and also help students to go to the American College Dance Association Festival and other college conferences every year.
“So, it’s really important to mix space with students that have ability to do that same thing; to talk about what matters to them, to share their experiences with the world in a way that hopefully is beautiful and difficult and educational, that’s really important part of what we do,” Konesko said.
Daigle said, “It’s been a really cool and fun process from the very first moment to the very end.”
