Tucked away in the Rogers Palmer Performing Arts Center is the office of Ethan Beam, a TJC alumni and an individual not new to the TJC performing arts scene. After playing lead roles during his time at the TJC theatre “Mary Poppins” and “Sleepy Hollow” Beam has returned to TJC in this semester to not only direct “Sir Gawain And The Green Knight,” but direct a show he himself wrote.
This however isn’t Beam’s first writing role in a production as he’s written original plays in his free time, as well as other adaptations of previous works for smaller scale productions.
“There’s something I learned and what I think a lot of playwrights probably follow is that you want to give yourself permission to write a bad version of the play. So I spent a lot of time, just allowing myself to finish the play. So that even if it ends up not being what you wanted it to be it can help you make a better end product,” Beam said.
Beam expressed his fear and excitement about taking an already classically written work like “Sir Gawain And The Green Knight” with its use of the old English text and adapting it into his own interpretation of the work to the TJC stage. However, Beam relished in the idea of using his own creative liberties and collaboration with others to enhance the work.
“I’ve written plays before, but it’s nothing that I think this is the first time that this much of an effort will go into producing something I’ve written. So it’ll actually be like people other than myself are working on it which is exciting and feels more like a collaboration, but it’s a little exciting and scary,” Beam said.
However, being an already existing work, Beam was adapting it himself in an original written format for the TJC stage. Beam incorporated elements from both the original work and his own vision.
“My main process here is that since it’s an already existing story, I basically get to curate what I like about every version of it. So that means elements such as poems and other story elements that anyone as an artistic person can add into this show and enjoy them,” Beam said.
Beam didn’t want to just stop there with his creative liberties. Beam plans to include the usage of large scale puppets to not only play the roles of parts of the environment, but also important characters to emphasize the story’s revelation about memory and remembering. Beam doesn’t want the audience to simply imagine these ideas but to see them.
“So, I should say that we’re going to be using large scale puppets that I’m going to be building. It kind of goes back to like the memory thing, that it’s obviously not feasible to have a horse on stage in Jean Brown. And it shows that these things are the way the main character would view them as if he’s retelling his story, similar to the way a horse is in your mind,” Beam said.
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” will be showcased at 7:30 p.m. from Nov. 13 through Nov. 16 in the Jean Browne Theatre. The tickets are $5 for students, active military, seniors and $10 for adults.
