'Cannonball' Run

With his latest work “Cannonball,” graduate playwrighting student Jed Hayes aims not only to update Sophocles’ Theban trilogy (in much the way “West Side Story” breathed new life into “Romeo and Juliet”), but also to overcome his fear of failure.

“What (the Department of Theater) tries to do is provide a comfortable environment where it’s OK to fail – as weird as that may seem – but you know when you get out in the real world, it’s going to be really hard to fail. You are going to fail and feel terrible; money is going to be lost. Whereas here, it’s sort of like you fail and you move on and you learn from it,” Hayes explained.

“Cannonball,” which runs this weekend, is the third and final installment in the UCLA Department of Theater’s New Play Festival, an opportunity held every spring quarter for second-year graduate playwrighting students to see their plays produced before entering the “real world.”

Each play is written during winter and spring of the student’s first year, and the playwright then teams up with a graduate theater directing student to produce the play.

This practical approach to writing is essential to the department, according to Hayes, who said the playwrighting program allows writers to see both sides of play development.

“There are times when you write a play and all that’s going to happen is that you are going to sit around a table and people are going to read it,” Hayes said. “And then there’s times like this where you get to sit and watch your play actually happen.”

Not only will Hayes see his play happen, but the festival also fosters a rare opportunity for synergy between the playwright and the director. In Hayes’ case, this joint effort includes graduate theater directing student Brian Kite. Directors and actors seldom have this chance to collaborate on plays in progress.

“We are still changing words and lines and adding sections. ... Suddenly, here is a new thing for your character, or everything you’ve been thinking about for your character, that’s gone now. By focusing on these things, they actually have a good time with that – that’s part of the process,” Kite said.

“This (process) is incredible for me,” Hayes said. “Writing has always been very organic, and there’s only so many times you can read your own play before you really just have to see it happen.”

Hayes, who studied acting at Northern Arizona University, began writing plays when he was unable to obtain what he considered interesting roles.

At UCLA, he had a play up for last year’s Theaterfest called “Elements of Society,” and also wrote “Damage,” which was featured in last winter’s Coppola One-Acts. Like “Cannonball,” “Damage” explores how family dynamics shape people’s lives.

“I’m always intrigued by (family). Nobody knows you as well as your family does,” Hayes said. “Nobody can get under your skin like your family can.”

“Cannonball” tells an updated version of the story of Oedipus, this time as a young boy searching to free himself from an obsession with his mother and abuse from his father. The boy looks to escape his family by using boxing as an outlet. Boxing grants him fame and fortune but not much comfort.

Hayes set the Greek classic in modern times, and his script is very different from Sophocles’ masterpiece.

“It’s not always linear in the way it handles its subjects, so the play often washes over you in its images and ideas of this sort of age-old story,” Kite said.

Hayes, who says he writes something everyday, believes he has connected with something if an idea he writes down cannot escape him.

“I’ll see things very early in the day that’s just sad or kind of shocking to me, and I can’t recover for the whole day. I’m really just sort of thinking about it the whole day, so that’s sort of how I filter out stories,” he said.

According to Coco Kleppinger, a third-year theater acting student who plays the mother character, audiences will be thinking about “Cannonball” for awhile, too.

“I go for plays that scare me, and this one was definitely out of my comfort zone,” Kleppinger said.

“I just kind of want to stir people up a bit,” Hayes said.