Looking back on her past lives, the spirit of a woman searches for answers in the theater department’s production of “Arya, an original piece written by Orda Lelanyja, a graduate student in playwriting and theater history criticism from Thailand.
The play “Arya” follows a spirit who tells her stories to the other spirits, so she can move on from one life to the next. The Buddhist beliefs of reincarnation play a major role in this play; the spirit woman has lived three lives already, and to move into the afterlife, she must learn something from all of them.
“The play talks about the nature of suffering, and how suffering can help you grow,” Lelanyja said. “People have a negative thought about suffering and always ask, ‘Why can’t we be happy?’ But everybody has to get sick and suffer somehow. If you look at it and try to understand it, you can overcome it. To me, the play has a lot of Buddhism in it, but it is not a Buddhist play or a religious play. It’s very universal, other than the reincarnation, I think that the play focuses more on people and their relationships.”
Lelanyja, who moved to the United States from Thailand, used theater and acting to improve her English. Her theater classes during her undergraduate years got her speaking and using the language in a way she couldn’t learn at home. Along with improving her speech, these classes paved the way for her playwriting.
“I was a theater major for my undergrad, and I had to learn everything — writing, acting, directing, design — and I found that I liked play-writing most,” Lelanyja said. “You can just sit alone and put your ideas and thoughts into it and you get a play, and then if you’re lucky people will want to perform it.”
Before “Arya,” Lelanyja wrote several one act and 10-minute plays because she hadn’t yet mastered English, but over time she decided to keep writing and make the others play longer than her others.
“‘Arya’ is different than most plays you get to do,” said cast member Kayla Fields, a junior theater major from Sonora. “It has a different type of feel than most plays. It’s a bunch of different lives, and there isn’t one main lead. Everyone on stage is important to the play.”
The technical side of this production also differs from the norm of typical production. The lighting on stage is always a colored light, and a white light never shines down on an actor.
The lighting, set design and costumes reflect how the play takes place in the spirit world and in a series of memories.
“‘Arya’ is a lot different from other shows I’ve designed costumes for because they way it was written was very broad,” said costume designer Katie Kloosterman, a junior technical design major. “There is no specific year or time period, so I had a lot of freedom to pick the specific time period and areas of time that I thought worked, it was a lot of fun but hard at the same time.”
“Arya” hit the stage Sunday evening and will continue through next Sunday in the Lab Theater. Showtimes are 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. General admission is $10 and student tickets are $5.
