MMC Theatre Students and Playwriting Alums Unite for New Production
When Marymount Manhattan College’s Theatre Arts department was finalizing the 2021-2022 show calendar, a unique idea surfaced for an open performance slot at New York Live Arts. From March 31st to April 2nd, that idea became a reality.
MMC Theatre Arts students spent the Spring 2022 semester preparing for IN PROCESS: 3 New Voices, staged readings of three plays written by Marymount Manhattan College alums Monet Hurst-Mendoza ’09, Penny Pun ’17, and Shelby Solla ’18 and directed by MMC alum Katherine Carter ’09, MMC faculty member Mary Fleischer, and renowned guest director Eugene Ma.
A collaborative theatrical project, IN PROCESS provided MMC Theatre alums the opportunity to experience their works in progress in front of a live audience while current students were immersed in new play development. Outside of working on this production, each playwright is pursuing a different career trajectory, so the students were offered a glimpse of various professional pathways that potentially await them following graduation. “Students get to see where they could be in five to ten years; the exchange between them and our visiting alums is electric,” Finkle said.
Since graduating from MMC, Hurst-Mendoza is currently a full-time staff writer on Law and Order: SVU. She was excited to come back to MMC to bring breathe•tulum to fruition. “I had been wanting to write a play about Tulum and the ecological effect that tourism is having,” Hurst-Mendoza said in an interview with MMC student Connor Spaulding ’23. Hurst-Mendoza channeled her passion for Tulum into a script that investigates the negative implications of a once sleepy town evolving into a party destination. She brought this project to life with longtime friend, collaborator, and fellow MMC alum Katherine Carter.
Solla’s Custodian explored the relationship dynamics of a group of janitors cleaning an underfunded high school in Pennsylvania, while Pun’s Rundown examined how two Asian women cope in their own ways with white workplace culture while working on a sitcom pilot for a white student’s senior thesis.