This is how senior Ell Chen, a theater veteran at Loomis Chaffee, frames the IDEA Framed-In Theater Festival:  

“I'd describe the process as like being in a group project with your friends, except you don't have the pressure of trying to achieve a good grade. Your only motivation is your passion and dedication to your ideas and your group, and your only limits are your creativity and ability."  

You get a prompt for a theme, a beginning and ending phrase, a time limit, a dimension of the “frame” of the stage, and off you go. This year’s theme prompt is “artificial intelligence.” Each play must begin with the line “Hey again” and end with the line “two plus two equal four.” The frame this year is a 10-foot square of light with corner light paths. 

The festival features two plays this year. 

Ell, who was awarded the Junior Theater & Dance Award last year, is the writer/director of Hey Again, Yuriann, with juniors Nina Gitlitz as the doctor, Natalie Pereira as Orson, and Sophie Singer as Yuriann.  

Freshman Klara Oppenheimer is the writer of An Imperfect Cycle and plays the classmate and creator. The director is junior Keunhoo Park with juniors Abby Fullerton as Hemi and Angelina Wang as Ella. 

Working behind the scenes for both plays on lighting and management of the stage are sophomore Lily Autry, freshman Zoe Rhodes, sophomore Joy Smith, and senior Boden Bubb. 

Run time for the two plays performed Wednesday night and tonight (April 23 and 24) in the Black Box Theater is about 40 minutes.  

“One of the biggest contributors to the writing process was my actors and director, whose input was invaluable during the writing of the script,” Klara said. “A suggestion from the director ended up shaping the entire end of the show to incorporate the idea of self-sacrifice, and the actors brought life to my characters, helping me find their voices and personalities.” 

Part of the challenge for Klara was settling on the idea. She said she went through many possibilities.  

“I was most interested in exploring the relationship between humans and A.I., something which becomes increasingly prevalent as A.I. progresses,” Klara said. “While I didn't exactly take this route, I used the idea of having an A.I. [character] behaving unnervingly human to craft a story that tells both the beauty and the dangers of a machine that can pose as not just a human — but a teenager and a student — well enough to trick a close friend for many months.” 

Ell said her play took about two weeks to write, “on and off a few hours” generally every other day. 

“I started by pitching some ideas to my group, out of which we chose one to develop further,” Ell said. “Then I wrote an outline, rough character profiles, and ‘blurbs,’ which are small collections of dialogue which I may or may not want to include. Then I started to write the full scenes. I'd write a scene, bring it in for my group to read and review, take it home and revise it while working on the next scene, and repeat until the final draft was complete. Afterward, we made small changes/final polish during rehearsal as we got to know the characters better and decided what worked and what didn't.” 

Certainly, a big part of Framed-In is the process, which can be rewarding in itself. 

“My favorite parts of the process were brainstorming with my group, because you just talk through your ideas and think out loud together — and make lots of realizations which you wouldn't on your own,” Ell said. “And tech, because that's when you step back as a writer/director and see everything come together. I was especially excited for tech this year because our show has a really fun lighting and sound setup which mimics fluorescent lighting. Boden, our lighting designer, did a great job.” 

Natalie has been on the stage many times at Loomis.   

“I've really enjoyed doing Framed-In because it is such a collaborative process, and I feel I've really grown close with a lot of people I've been working with,” Natalie said. “Everyone works so well together, and we hold each other accountable. Since it is such a short turnaround, the whole rehearsal process boils down to: what makes a good story? I think sometimes when you're doing a longer show on the mainstage, there are a lot more layers to consider and components to think about, but for Framed-In it's just holding that core principle as the most important.”