The first show featured during Winter Workshops was “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a thrilling challenge for the Green Room Theatre Company.  An adaptation of Charlette Perkin’s story of the same name, the stage play explores the story’s original themes of “sexual, social, and economic oppression of women”, while also bringing up the idea of generational trauma unique to the retelling.

Due to the subject matter and length of the play, tripling that of the average 30-minute Winter Workshop debut, one could imagine how daunting the task of executing the story was. But due to the diligence of the two directors, Sydney Lang and Maya Spears, the show had a fantastic premiere.

Sydney Lang

As a senior pursuing a major in Theatre Production and Performance, Lang has been involved with the student-led Green Room for her entire academic career. Her first time directing a show for the department was last year, in which she co-directed “The Interviewers” with fellow Olivet student Katie Devries.

“I co-directed a show last year,” Lang said, “but with that one, I took much more of the technical role than a director role”. She was in charge of the lighting and sound production of last year’s show.

Along with “The Interviewers,” Lang also took a class in directing that gave her insight into the skills needed of a director. Lang used everything she learned from these experiences and put it into the production of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

Maya Spears

Spears is new to the Green Room, with this being only her second year with the program. Last year she was in the Winter Workshop production “To Burn A Witch,” which is partly what inspired her to come back to put on her own show.

This is her second directorial foray, with her first being a show she put on as a high schooler, directing middle schoolers. She admits that her experience of codirecting in high school was more of a babysitter than a director. She had high hopes for “The Yellow Wallpaper “though.

“This is my first time doing all the behind-the-scenes work like building the show from scratch and not just coming in and helping wrangle the kids together” Spears said, showing how eager she is to work with Lang on a full-length production.

Working Together

Lang and Spears met last year, both during Winter Workshop productions and their Intro to Theatre class. This is when they decided that they should conduct a show together.

For “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the pair was much more involved with all aspects of production than in previous years.

“I have been loving the experience so far. It’s been a little scary to be in charge of my peers,” Spears said. “But I think the way that we work together has made the experience so much more enjoyable because Sydney has taken directing and I haven’t yet”.

“I do know the rules, but in a way that’s kind of limiting,” Lang said, explaining that she has an idea of how things should be that prevents her from thinking outside the box, that Spears doesn’t.

Adapting “The Yellow Wallpaper”

They chose Catherine Funkhouser’s adaptation of “The Yellow Wallpaper” specifically for its themes of oppression that they both found relatable.

“In the show, Jane feels those same exact things that we and many, many, many people throughout the world have felt, especially women have felt trying to scream for help, ask for help,” Spears said. “We related a lot to that message, and we feel that there’s a lot of people that are going to be in the audience on opening night that are going to feel the exact same way.”