Merging film and theater, MSU students will stream live performance of play about insomnia
A group of Missouri State University students are bridging the gap between film and theater with a new project the explores insomnia and mental health, streaming for free on YouTube Live next weekend.
For the project, titled "Passing Ships," a theater production with four cast members will be broadcast live by a team of 15-20 graduate and undergraduate students. This style of project is the first for the university's newly-developed Dramatic Writing Graduate Program, established in fall 2020.
Director, writer and producer Jacob Martin, a second-year student in the graduate program, began writing the play for a class last year. This semester, he and his team are completing the project's production and post-production, prior to graduation in May.
This style of production, live, broadcasted theater, is becoming more popular with television remakes of classic theater productions like "Grease Live!"
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"A lot of theaters right now are talking about how to produce a play that is not SAG-AFTRA, under the film union, and still under the theater union," theater consultant and second-year graduate student Alexander Hehr said. "This is kind of that bridged gap that was happening during COVID. A lot of people aren't returning to the theater until they feel safe, especially older audiences. This is a nice intermediary between that."
"Passing Ships" tells the story of three insomniacs who build relationships with one another while meeting in the basement laundry room of their Manhattan apartment complex late at night.
Martin was inspired to write "Passing Ships" based on his own experiences with insomnia, which he's lived with for about 11 years. Martin's first experience with insomnia was during his first semester at college.
"I would go to my fraternity house in the middle of the night, just to hang out," Martin recalled. "There were two or three other people who also seemed to be having issues with insomnia and we had these nights where we'd hang out. Sometimes we'd watch TV, have really deep conversations ... and the weird thing was none of us were really friends outside of that time. It was just this weird pocket of night where there was no one else around."
Along with the topic of insomnia, "Passing Ships" is about love and connection.
The apartment residents, Max, 32, Janice, 51 and Cecilia, 28, develop a sort of love triangle, Martin said, all while working through their own personal challenges of grief and depression.
"A lot of it ('Passing Ships') just has to do with the difference between love and intimacy and how when people become intimate friends that can become a little messy, especially when you're dealing with mental health issues, such as insomnia," Martin said.
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The cast and crew of "Passing Ships" will produce the show in the Strong Hall television studio on Missouri State's campus. For those who want to tune in, "Passing Ships" will stream on YouTube Live around 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 24 and Saturday, Feb. 25. Martin said the production will run about 90 minutes with occasional pauses for stage changes.
The livestream link will be available on the Missouri State Media Journalism and Film Department Facebook at facebook.com/MSU.MediaJournalismFilm and Twitter at twitter.com/MSU_MJF. Later this spring, a completed version of the film will screen at Moxie Cinema.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: First in program history, Missouri State project bridges film, theater
