As playwright Karen Schaeffer stared at herself in the mirror a year and a half ago, she had an idea for a play about what she called her “head voices.”
“I know that from being a teenager and then moving on to college, and then as an adult even, that those head voices can be pretty loud and sometimes very negative. And I thought, ‘This would be an interesting representation in a play.’”
That idea became “HEAD VOICES,” the winner of this year’s Drake Neighborhood Playwright Series — a playwriting contest anybody can enter to win a staged reading of their work.
“HEAD VOICES” follows a woman whose internal voices and insecurities lead to her saying ‘no’ to marrying the man she loves. Through self-work, therapy and self-love, she heals, and over time her head voices get quieter and she brings him back into her life. Actors on stage will represent the voices during the staged reading.
“Initially, it wasn’t a fully fleshed out idea. I knew that I wanted them to be together and I wanted the audience to see how they were together, their relationship and what kind of relationship they had,” Schaeffer said. “I wanted them to see it falling apart. And then I wanted the audience to see them going through the process of getting back together.”
Schaeffer wrote the play using a signature method she calls “what if.” She took her initial idea and then asked herself what would happen if something new happened in the plot.
One thing Schaeffer kept in mind during the writing process was having a main female character with complexity and arcs. That fascination was what sparked her interest in writing in the first place.
“I was looking at the various seasons at the different community theaters – local community theaters – and wasn’t really happy with the female characters I was seeing on stage. I wanted to see characters like myself,” Schaeffer said. “I wanted to see the women in my neighborhood, the women at the grocery store, the women I work with, those kinds of things. And I was like, ‘Why are plays not being done with these kinds of women?’”
Schaeffer wants her female characters to be central to the story and to be “real.” To her, real is “situational and conversational,” where the situations and conversations are true-to-life. In “HEAD VOICES,” Schaeffer said, this realness comes through in the friendship the main character has with another woman.
“I wanted that friend relationship to be real [with] conversations that you might have with a friend, especially when you’re struggling during a situation. I wanted that friend to be honest with the character, not just someone who placated them,” Schaeffer said.
Schaeffer also focused on authenticity with a therapy scene that happens over Zoom, consulting with a therapist she knew to write the scene. She incorporates this search for authenticity in every stage of the writing process.
“You have to be at places. You have to go and sit at restaurants and coffee bars and parades and just anywhere that people are because that’s where you hear conversations. That’s where you get ideas,” Schaeffer said.
Schaeffer did not write “HEAD VOICES” with the intent of submitting it to the Neighborhood Playwright Contest, though she knew as she wrote it that it would be a good fit because of its limited setting, inclusion of relatable characters for college students and unique focus. Last year, she and her son Alex Schaeffer won with the play “PROLOG.” She said she enjoyed the workshopping process of the contest, especially the college atmosphere and getting feedback from the actors.
“I feel like the energy with college students is refreshing. They’re very honest. Their ideas come from a place that is different than the places that people who have been out in the world for a long period of time.” – Schaeffer said.
Erin Degner, associate professor of theatre arts at Drake, will direct the staged reading of “HEAD VOICES.” Staged readings do not include blocking, line memorization or a lot of technical elements that traditional plays or musicals have.
“It’s about the character work, making sure that a lot of the acting is happening, yes, in their faces, but really in their voices,” Degner said.
Students auditioned for the staged reading at the same time as the other theater productions, the weekend before school began, after which professors casted every role for the semester. The cast for “HEAD VOICES” will include the main female character, her boyfriend, her friend and the head voices. The production process takes three weeks, with rehearsals on weekday evenings.
“I’m always looking forward to getting new work up on stage,” Degner said. “It’s fun to have a piece of work that no one has worked on before. The students don’t have anything to go off of. They can’t watch a video of another show. It’s brand new and we get to kind of make it our own.”
The performances will take place Sept. 13 and 14 at 7:30 p.m. at the Turner Jazz Center in the Harmon Fine Arts Center. Tickets are available online at https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/drakefinearts/6865 or at the Drake Box Office in-person at the entrance of the Fine Arts Center, by email at [email protected] or by phone at 515-271-3841.
