All Campus Theatre will produce “Everything Will be Different: A Brief History of Helen of Troy,” by Mark Schultz this week. The play is about a young girl, Charlotte, who is dealing the grief of her mother’s death by finding solace in the story of Helen of Troy.
Jonathan Seymore, the play’s director and senior in music, chose this play because audience members will be able to find a connection to its themes.
“Everyone will be able to relate to (this play),” he said. “Everyone has lost something they love, adjusted to the change, and eventually moved on from it.”
The play opens with Charlotte’s mother’s funeral. Charlotte is standing alone until her father, Harry, tries to comfort her the best way he can. Charlotte then walks away, beginning an estrangement between the two. From there, the rest of the play takes place in the course of two to three months, following the journey of 15-year-old Charlotte and how she deals with her mother’s death.
Lenae McKee, a senior in political science who portrays Charlotte, said she had to revert back to what it meant to be a 15-year-old girl again. She said it was surprising to remember how she acted when she was that age.
“The crazy aspects of being an overdramatic teenager is how we really were,” McKee said.
Along with getting the age of her character down, McKee had to focus on Charlotte’s mother’s death. To become Charlotte, McKee pulled emotion from the loss of one of her friends from high school and the loss of her grandfather.
For Charlotte, her mother’s death affects her more than she realizes. After writing a report for school, she begins to idolize Helen of Troy to help her cope. She discovers that Helen of Troy was a beautiful woman that everyone wanted and admired. She uses this image and relates it to her mother, whose name was also Helen.
Wanting to feel loved and admired, just as Helen of Troy, Charlotte goes to different characters, begging for attention that she does not receive from her distant father.
Quinn Cason, junior in vocal performance, plays Charlotte’s guidance counselor Gary, and is one of the first characters Charlotte encounters in the play. Charlotte tells him she wants to go into the adult film industry since she said she is “made for sex.” While Gary says it is not a viable career goal, Charlotte already has created the fantasy in her head and acts on it.
Seymore said that every subsequent scene moves Charlotte away from her fantasy world and back into reality.
This is not Seymore’s first time as a director for ACT. His last production was “Crimes of the Heart.” It was story about three sisters, one of which attempts to kill her husband, and then mayhem that occurs because of the event. He wanted to direct “Everything Will be Different” because it is brand new and not widely produced.
Cason said that ACT is probably delivering the Tennessee debut since the play has been produced only in London and Los Angeles.
“Everything Will be Different” will run Wednesday, Sept. 5, through Friday, Sept. 7, at 8 p.m. in the Clarence Brown Theatre. It will end on Sunday, Sept. 9, with two showings, one at 2 p.m. and the last at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 for students and $8 for the general public.
