Spread the Love: Stressed by Alan Haehnel

This week we spread the love for Stressed, a teen symphony by Alan Haehnel. Filmed live at the Missouri Thespians Conference, surrounded by stressed teenagers.

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Transcript

Welcome to this week’s Spread the Love. This week we are at the Missouri State Thespian Festival and we are talking about Stressed by Alan Haehnel. Stressed is about, you guessed it, stress. Specifically it’s about the stress in four teenagers lives. For Alex it’s school, for Josh his girlfriend, Carmen’s dealing with her coach and Mindy is frustrated with her parents. Craig, what do you love about Stressed?

I love the structure of Stressed. It goes from monologue, to speeches that dovetail off each other, to speeches that overlap each other, and to group speak. The intensity and the stress builds and builds and builds until the climax almost like a piece of music. Like a symphony. And that’s exactly what Alan calls it – a teen symphony. Lindsay, what do you love about Stressed?

Well I’m just going to build on that. It’s not only a symphony of sound, it is also a symphony of character. Really vivid characters with vivid themes. Revealing their frustrations one after the other, building on each other, all in unison, all at the same time, clashing into each other. It is an aural experience. Stressed is a character experience. Stressed is a theatrical experience. When you’ve got that magic trio you have an awesome competition piece.

That’s it for Spread the Love.