Texas A&M University-Kingsville’s theater group is working on a new play you will just fall for – Gravity. An original work by TAMUK’s own Theater Director Corey Ranson, Gravity is set to pull at your heartstrings and fill your mind with questions of life, loss and a single word which haunts – why.
Zoe Collins, played by Lexi LaCour, is a young girl who just saw her boyfriend fall to his death through a sink hole. Distraught and with a lack of understanding as to why someone so great can be taken, Zoe goes on a search to understand. Playwriter Ranson focuses on this.
“It is her angle and her story and her frustration of the fact that the one beautiful person in her life out of the entire universe, the entire galaxy, the entire everything, on this day, in this moment, in this little bitty six-foot area, my perfect person, gets sucked away,” Ranson said.
LaCour leans on her imagination to fulfill this role.
“I’ve never had a significant other die, especially that suddenly and in such an odd way, so that is a very challenging thing to evoke on stage,” LaCour said.
In opposite life experience, Laurie Guajardo Hoefelmeyer has experienced that loss of a loved one in her real life – the death of her husband. Guajardo Hoefelmeyer plays Moon Light, the woman who owns the land where Zoe Collins loses her boyfriend. Moon Light is a widow. Being a widow herself, Guajardo Hoefelmeyer is able to draw on her own life experience to understand the character she plays.
Guajardo Hoefelmeyer feels that when she first lost her husband, at 27, she was much like the character Zoe Collins, but now, Guajardo Hoefelmeyer feels she is more in the position of Moon Light. Opposite of Guajardo Hoefelmeyer’s “natural instincts,” Moon Light is a hippie with a toned down and ethereal calmness.
“That’s a calmness I don’t think I quite have in real life…that is a level of Zen I hope I’ll get to at some point in my life…so I do find myself battling against my natural reactions,” Guajardo Hoefelmeyer said.
A strange twist occurs when Robin Machuca who plays Brian, Zoe’s boyfriend whom falls to his death through a sink hole, then appears again as a completely different character; Sunny Light, Moon Light’s son.
“Playing two different characters, with completely two different personalities…it’s a really challenging two roles to play,” Machuca said.
Gravity is laden with other talented actors including Alessandra Ramirez as Star Light, daughter to Moon Light, Ashley Salinas as Cally, best friend to Zoe, as well as Edgar Manuel Vazquez Jr., Etta Enow, Caroline Dietz and Nathan Soord as rescue crew and callers to a radio show.
Jackson Lewis performs as a cop and an unexpected character which is to remain secret for now. Gage Roberts, most recently known for his part as The Guy in The Flick, enters Gravity as Dr. Ron Universe.
Backstage performances include lights by Diana Ibarra, props by Katie Spencer and costumes by Caroline Dietz. All performers and stagehands are guided and controlled by the stage manager Kassandra “Chachi” Escobar.
“The most important character backstage and on stage; I have to control all these people,” Escobar said. With much of Escobar’s crew agreeing with her being the most important role, they also do not hold back what they have when rehearsing and performing.
After opening at TAMUK, Gravity will then be performed by the TAMUK theater group at The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for Region 6 which includes Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas.
Once Gravity has toured by the current TAMUK company, it can then be submitted for publication. If Gravity were to become published, TAMUK students will forever have the rights to be listed as the first cast in the script since they are the premiere actors. LaCour, playing the protagonist, understands what this means.
“You can never pull from another performance, you’re the first one, so you kind of have to go through all that on your own,” LaCour said.
Machuca, being greatly challenged with his roles, knows what is to come.
“How we portray these specific characters is how it should be portrayed from then forth,” Machuca said.
Because Ranson is the writer of this play, a lot of the changes he made in the script are based upon the TAMUK theater students themselves; therefore these characters are molded by them and have stayed that way.
“I think it’s great to be in a play where you can actually speak to the author of the play,” Dietz said.
Gravity performances are at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 1 and 2 at The Little Theater and at 2:30 p.m. on Nov. 3 at The Little Theater.
