Win/Lose/Draw Capstone March 10

By Kendra Johnson, Arts Editor  (Courtesy photo/The Bison)

External friendship hides an inner turmoil of competitive energy in “Little Miss Fresno,” one of three plays by Ara Watson and Mary Gallagher together titled “Win/Lose/Draw.” Elizabeth Grimes and Brenna Bergeron will perform “Win/Lose/Draw” as part of their senior capstone project.

The performance will be held in Sarkeys Black Box Theatre at 7 p.m. March 10. It features excerpts from the other two plays in the compilation, “Final Placement” and “Chocolate King,” as well as a scene from “Little Miss Fresno.”

“Final Placement” tells the story of a social worker (Brenna) who fights with an abusive mother (Grimes). The final scene from “Chocolate King” shows the struggle of body issues and the negative impact of the way society views food.

All graduating theatre majors are required to craft a capstone under the guidance of OBU’s theatre faculty. Students choose a project that allows them to display what they have learned in their concentration area. Bergeron and Grimes both selected acting as their focus and began thinking about the production about a year ago.

“Acting gives me an insight into other peoples’ lives and shows me how to better love those people,” Bergeron said. “It’s made me even more of an empathetic person, and as a Christian artist, that is a strong calling that I feel.”

Originally each of the actors had considered doing a separate performance, but they decided that their work would be stronger together.

“Lizzy and I were talking about it one day, and we both had expressed interest in wanting to do a one-woman show,” Bergeron said. “And we, Lizzie and I, have worked together since freshman year. My very first scene, even though it was in a class, was with Lizzie, and ever since then we’ve played opposite each other a lot and so it was kind of this mutual thing where we were like, yeah, we want to do a one-woman show and then we were like, why don’t we do a two-woman show.”

The decision to perform segments of “Win/Lose/Draw,” was a gradual process.

“I came across ‘Win/Lose/Draw’ and I was like, oh, this is kinda interesting,” Grimes said. “I read through it and I was like, ‘I think this one has potential.’ Brenna read through it and she was like, ‘Yeah I really like it.;’ And so, we kept our feelers out for anything else, but we both were really drawn to ‘Win/Lose/Draw,’ so it just sort of happened.”

If the fascinating attention to detail of Bergeron and Grime’s past work in numerous OBU theatre productions is any indication of what will come on March 10, they will take their audience from laughing to crying, and back again.