A passion for performance, UW-Green Bay students explore love of art in student-written show | Press Times

UW-Green Bay students are set to stage a story of self-discovery and love of the arts in a studio production of Page Turner — a new show written by UW-Green Bay senior Mia Bolyard.

“At its core, it’s about this girl named Teagan. She’s a freshman in college and she’s studying marketing and business because that’s what her family does — her brother is a business major, her mother works in marketing, it’s just her path,” Bolyard said. “Her mom has a huge focus on financial comfort and financial security due to her own past. She thinks of this guy — a male character for a book — and she runs with it and opens herself up to this creative endeavor and this world of her own making and realizes she wants to be a writer. And so there are these fictional characters from her brain and they help her on this journey of, ‘Careers that are creative don’t have to be scary just because they have this reputation of not being full of money.’ It’s a story of self discovery with a little bit of a writing flair to it.”

Although the process of putting Page Turner together may look similar to other shows, being a student-written and student-run production has meant that the students involved have had to learn to rely on themselves and each other.

“A lot of the work I’m doing is still the same, whether it’s a new work or an established work. But being a student-run production and a studio production, we have to be very self-sufficient,” said Carter Bauer, stage manager for the production. “We do have a faculty mentor, Rebecca Stone-Thornberry, but she’s not the director of the show and so we have to manage it ourselves and do a lot of the communicating between people, keeping track of things and making sure that everything is going well in that regard.”

Despite the added challenge, working on the show has still been a rewarding process for the students involved.

“This kind of reinvigorated some of my passion for theater,” said the show’s director, Autumn Johnson. “Having another major, it’s kind of hard to balance all of those things. It’s been very rewarding to see something like this come to life and to put trust in other people and have it actually work out… In fall of 2023, we did a one-act festival and I went, ‘There’s no way I could ever direct a show. I would be so bad at that.’ And then I took directing this spring and that’s when Mia asked me to be the director. I think I have a little more confidence now. I’ve been building up the confidence to direct a full one-act show and trust my instincts, trust my decisions and trust that the cast and our crew are going to be dependable for each other, which we have been.”

That dependability and trust within the cast and crew, Bolyard said, stems from a mutual respect for each other and a shared passion for theater.

“I think the most rewarding thing has been finding the dynamic of the company as a whole,” Bolyard said. “We all had this general respect for each other and we’ve known each other at different levels and capacities… I have really close friends in the cast and then some people in the cast, I don’t know that we know each other enough, but it’s great to see all of them taking the same care and passion with this show. There’s a warm, fuzzy feeling of everyone just doing theater because we like it.”

Bolyard said she hopes those planning to attend the show walk away with a better understanding of that passion, even in the face of challenges.

“I would love if people could walk away from this show feeling the core energy and the heart of it all, which is the love of the arts,” Bolyard said. “I want people to leave having more of an appreciation for the arts — more respect — and feeling the love and the care that we as a company have put into this show. Especially in the current day, there’s so much struggle with different colleges getting their theater programs cut — our own included… Due to things out of our control and as much as we try, it just always feels like a new obstacle is put in front of our way… I want people to think, in the back of their mind, ‘Wow, these students did that with nothing and the only thing that kept them going was their love and passion for art.’”

That sentiment is not only present in the attitudes of the cast and crew, but in the show itself.

“My favorite scene in the show is an argument that the main character has with their mom,” Bauer said. “There’s a really compelling discussion happening about, ‘If art is all around us, why do we under-appreciate artists in the way that a lot of people do?’ I hope the audience walks away thinking about, ‘Art is all around me and how do I respond to the arts? How do I interact with the arts? How can I help support the arts if that’s important to me?’”

“I really like the message of the show — that’s one of my favorite things about it,” Johnson said. “And Mia weaves her humor in super well, so I hope they enjoy it and I hope they have fun and get some laughs out of it, but I also hope that they can see the effort and care that went into it… I hope they see our collective passion… I hope audiences can see how much effort we put in and that they will appreciate our work as much as we appreciate them coming to see it.”

Performances of Page Turner took place on Friday, Feb. 21, and Saturday, Feb. 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the Jean Weidner Theatre.

More information and tickets are available at uwgb.edu/theatre/events.

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