Baldwin Wallace theater students present an intimate look at the beauty of a sibling relationship with the student-directed production of “The Baltimore Waltz,” premiering Nov. 20 in the Loomis Acting Studio.
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, “The Baltimore Waltz” is an absurdist play that follows siblings Anna and Carl as they take a trip to Europe after Anna has been diagnosed with the fictional “acquired toilet disease.” The two search for a cure to this terminal disease while on their vacation, meeting and having relations with many men along the way.
This production is a part of the Conservatory of the Performing Arts’ lab series, which gives students the opportunity to direct a play of their choosing. Senior acting and directing student Bella Issa said she has been drawn to “The Baltimore Waltz” since reading it in her script analysis class during her first year at BW.
“It was one of the first plays I read at BW, and I have three older brothers, so the entire emotional relationship that is explored in the play really hits me hard,” Issa said. “It’s not necessarily the same, but I can definitely see the threads and how it’s similar to my life.”
The core of “The Baltimore Waltz” is the sibling relationship between Anna and Carl, which Vogel based on her real-life experiences with her brother Carl who died of complications related to AIDS. Junior acting and directing student Catie Popelka, who plays Anna, said that writing this play was a way for Vogel to cope with the grief of her brother’s passing.
“It’s based on Paula Vogel’s experience with her own brother, Carl, so she is therefore a stand-in for Anna, and her brother Carl is a stand-in for the brother Carl,” Popelka said. “You can really tell in how she wrote Carl, how deeply she cared about her brother, and I think their sibling relationship is just the one of the strongest parts of the show for me, and I’m really excited to see how people connect with that.”
This student-directed play gives opportunities for students to experience working with a director who is a peer, which is something that sophomore BFA acting student Jonathan Daher, who plays Carl, has never experienced at BW.
“I’ve never been in a student-directed production, and…it’s a great first experience for me,” Daher said. “It felt very collaborative, like we felt like we’ve been able to give a lot of input, and she’s asked for our input.”
On the other hand, sophomore BFA acting student David Keller, who plays The Third Man, has primarily worked on student-run productions at BW. For him, working in the Loomis Acting Studio was a very new and exciting experience.
“I think the way that Bella has constructed the show, and the way that she’s allowed us to use the space is really cool and really innovative,” Keller said. “I am a strong believer in the fact that limitation kind of lets creativity run wild, so I think the smaller space definitely has … opened our minds a lot and has forced us to think outside the box in how we portray different scenes.”
Issa said her directing process has been influenced by the classes she has taken at BW, primarily acting and directing classes, as well as her background as a competitive dancer. All these experiences have given her the tools to create an “impactful stage picture.”
“Going from a choreographer or a dance perspective into directing is really helpful because you understand how bodies move in space and how they work with each other,” Issa said. “And then also, without my acting experience, I wouldn’t understand how to keep a truthful performance at the heart of it all.”
“The Baltimore Waltz” is Issa’s first time directing a full-length production, and she said that as a director, she gets to be an “outside observer” to the internal acting process of the cast. She gets to see what is happening in front of her and leads the production into the direction she sets out.
Popelka said that she has only worked on faculty-directed productions, so she is excited to work with a student director who is mid-process for a play.
“It’s been wonderful to work with [Bella], just strictly because of how passionate she is about this play.” Popelka said. “It’s very different for me working with a director in-process because I feel like we have to work with her as her process changes…It’s been honestly so amazing to see her grow her vision as a director.”
Issa said that during early rehearsals, she and the cast focused on building the sibling relationship and how terminal illness and the AIDS epidemic affects both the afflicted and their loved ones; however, after her directing advisor René Copeland came to observe rehearsals, Copeland had to remind Issa that this play is a comedy—not a tragedy.
“I had to pivot a little bit and lighten up the tone,” Issa said. “The foundation and the emotional connection that all the actors and I built to the text is what made it possible for it to be super easy for us to be like, ‘Okay, so we can make this a little bit funnier. We can start playing now,’ as my actors said.”
Daher said that working with a very small cast with three principal actors allowed him to feel very comfortable in sharing his experiences during the initial table work, which focused on laying the emotional foundation of the show.
“We read through the play, and then we sat and talked about our experiences with loss, our experiences with terminal illness, our experiences with all these different things, and it was such a great bonding experience for all of us,” Daher said. “I felt so safe, and I was able to be so open and just really connect with the character a lot more because of the table work.”
Keller said the small cast also allowed the students to really focus on their characters and the relationships among them. Because the cast has three principal actors, Keller, as The Third Man, plays about fifteen total characters who Anna and Carl meet on their European journey, so he sees a major benefit from having this small cast.
“I think it gives us as actors a lot more time to kind of figure out what our relationships are to each other, and it’s really gifted us the ability to learn how we all work,” Keller said. “It just feels like such an intimate experience, which is nice considering that given the space that we’re in, it is going to be a very intimate show.”
For Popelka, playing Anna in “The Baltimore Waltz” is a moment of personal growth because it is one of the first times she has ever played a role so different from herself. She said that Anna has been her most challenging role, but the two do share some similarities, and she is learning new lessons from Anna every day.
“I feel like I, as an actor, have played very specific roles in the past. I always tend to play very young roles,” Popelka said. “So, I was very honored that Bella chose me to be Anna because Anna is…early 30s. It’s been so insane to be able to watch myself grow as an actor throughout this and push myself.”
As audiences come to see this production, Issa hopes that they can understand the effects of the AIDS epidemic through an emotional lens, rather than as a “history lesson.”
“I want them to leave with a better understanding of what we deserve from our government and what we should fight for, and how the things we fight for are always the things we love,” Issa said.
Keller said that the story of “The Baltimore Waltz” comes from a perspective not often seen in stories about the AIDS epidemic—the perspective of those dealing with the grief of losing someone to this terminal illness.
Keller said: “I really hope that the audience takes away just kind of holding your loved ones close and … learn a little bit more about empathy and about, no matter how much a situation affects you, you never know how much it affects somebody else.”
“The Baltimore Waltz” runs Nov. 20-23 in the Loomis Acting Studio. Tickets are free for the public and may be purchased here.
