Statesmen Theatre brought to stage the play Big Love on Jan. 20 for the Virginia High School League festival. The festival is a one-act competition where 10 total schools competed.
Based on Aeschylus’ play The Suppliants, Big Love is about fifty brides who flee from Greece to Italy in order to avoid marrying their cousins against their will.
“Big Love is different from other plays we’ve done because it’s a dark comedy,” junior and actress in Big Love Madison Miller said. “Usually on plays, we have a complicated set and more cool aspects like lighting and sound effects, but on this play, the main focus was the acting itself.”
Miller played the role of Thyona, one of the three main sisters in the show.
“What I love about [Thyona] is that she is fiery and doesn’t give in to anyone whatsoever,” Miller said. “That’s something I commend her for because it is hard to stay true to yourself nowadays.”
Although still categorized as a comedy, characters in Big Love raise serious topics of gender roles, domestic violence and love.
“It isn’t a dark comedy in the sense that bad things are happening around us and we are making fun of them,” junior and actress in Big Love Cristina Beltran said. “It is more like ‘I’m gonna say a joke to make [the story] easier to swallow, but these are actual problems that people face in society’.”
Beltran played the character of Bella, an eighty-year-old grandmother who had the most important role in Big Love. Her character was an embodiment of the comedic and simultaneously serious nature of the play.
“Bella provided comedic relief, but she was also someone to be taken seriously,” Beltran said. “She was like the wise old grandma who had seen it all. Her role was the most important because she delivered the final lines that held the whole message of the play.”
Even though Statesmen Theatre did not move on to the second round of the competition, Beltran was selected as part of the All Star Cast.