Acting New Stew 2024 - "When The Party's Over" Quadruple Bill

Acting New Stew (ANS) was an annual production for first year, second year, and transfer students in the Acting BA/BFA major to get acclimated into the theatre program. This production happened over the course of the Adjunct Faculty strike, which meant any Columbia faculty who was a member of the Adjunct Faculty Union was barred from teaching (or in our case, directing) until the union's demands were met. Our director, Gabrielle Wilson, was able to ask full-time directing faculty Brian Shaw to step in as director for the remainder of the production.
Our New Stew consisted of four different plays written by playwriting students at Columbia College Chicago and University of Greenwich: "First Date, Last Night" by Julian Watson, "TigerLily" by Amber Ilisie, "Water Damage" Madeleine Gates, and "Shoebox" by Meltem Mazmanoglu.
The show required a flexible set that could contain four different living areas in one tight space, and could evoke those eerily familiar feelings of isolation, claustrophobia, and emotional and physical distance widely felt during the COVID-19 Pandemic.