From Feb. 13-18, the Kennesaw State department of theater studies put on a student production called “Feathers and Teeth,” first written by Charise Castro Smith and directed by professor Jim Davis.
It is described by Smith as a “thrilledy,” combination of thriller and comedy, following an American family in the late 1970s.
The story revolves around the teenage daughter of a recently widowed man and his new girlfriend. After the father accidentally hits a small, unusual animal with his car, an incredibly strange series of events are put into motion. What starts off feeling like a parody of a 1970s sitcom quickly turns into something more strange and mysterious.
“It moves back and forth between broad comedy and scariness really, really fast — it’s a real whiplash thing there,” Davis said. “So we spent a lot of time thinking about, ‘How do we do this?’ And just kind of said, ‘I don’t know, let’s try.’ And I don’t know if I have any kind of prescriptive way to say this is how we did it — but we did it.”
The actors took on the complex approach as well in Brady Brown’s goofy and dramatic Arthur, Willa Sanders’ complicated and compelling Carol, Ashley Behrend’s turbulent Chris and Zach Elton’s massively entertaining appearance as Hugo.
The characters all have surprising developments and multiple dimensions, but the way they play together and off each other is something special.
“I wish that I’d come up with this — the four characters are all in different plays,” Davis said. “Carol is on some kind of bizarre thing, Arthur is in this family tragedy, Chris is in this legit ‘Friday the 13th’ horror movie and Hugo is from like, something with Chris Farley or fart jokes or something.”
From the set the production and design team built to the costumes, sound design, prop work and effects work — the crew of this show took something that was great and gave it an element of wonder.
“It always strikes me that big musicals are trying to be movies when they grow up, and that’s cool and I love that, but that’s not a thing that’s interested me in theatre,” Davis said. “I love the fact that we can scare the audience with two ketchup bottles full of fake blood squirting from behind the door — that’s more fun to me.”
