“Leave your cell phones on, we don’t care!” said Nicole Grijnsztein ’07 to welcome visitors to Southern fast food staple Waffle House, transplanted to the Westco Café as a play written and directed by Owen Roberts ’07
Audience members sat throughout the room and all along the walls and bar of the Westco Café. Three tables were left open at the makeshift Waffle House and the play took place amongst the audience members. There was no music signaling the start and Westco Café’s regular lighting was used to light the performance space.
The half-hour long show started out casually, with three actors playing Waffle House employees talking and getting ready for the customers to enter. They swept around the audience members and set the tables.
“Every person sees the play a different way depending on where you were seated,” said Becca Rodgers ’08.
Adam Read-Brown ’07 and Katie Koerten ’07 casually walked in and seated themselves at one of the empty tables. They had a long conversation about school, girlfriends, life up north and typical college-age concerns. From the moment they walked in it was obvious that their relationship was one of mother and son. from the way they carried themselves to the clothes they wore.
Next came in a family of four with two screaming youngsters, played by Mary Campion ’07 and Rebecca Josue ’06. Throughout their meal they screamed, talked loudly and fought with each other, causing the family to finally leave of embarrassment.
The last group to enter was two boys who, upon waiting to be seated, see a friend’s hot mom and wind up eating with her. This part of the show was one of the funnier elements.
While Koerten was in the bathroom, the short order chef, played by Austin Purnell ’08, talked to Read-Brown about his struggles with his mother and college. They bonded despite seeming to be at very different points in their lives.
All four conversations occurred simultaneously and audience members had to often choose which one to hear.
“I never imagined watching a restaurant from a detached point of view could be so interesting,” said Gabriel Sessions ’08. “The spliced-together bits of different conversations I took away gave the piece an air of authenticity, and no two performances could ever be the same.”
Roberts used his own personal experience from living in Virginia for 11 years to write this play.
“The inspiration for the play came from several different sources,” he said. “ The concept of having multiple, simultaneous conversations was an idea I got as a sort of joke originally, when I was thinking about listening to conversations of other people in public places, especially restaurants. The idea to use Waffle House came to me when I was returning home from school with my mother and was in a contemplative mood. The inspiration for the characters and dialogue all came from my experience growing up in the South.”
There was no big attention grabber at the end of the show. Cast members stood up and took a bow, signaling the end as suddenly as the beginning of the show.
Audience members seemed to enjoy the seating and the liberty of being able to really listen to personal moments.
“It was very experimental and cool,” said Rachel Jacobson ’08. “I loved listening in on other people’s conversations.”
A topic that came up in all of the conversations during “Waffle House” was the difficult decision of what to order.
“I almost always order an egg and cheese sandwich with hashbrowns smothered [with onions] and a coke,” Roberts said. “Every once in a while I get a waffle, for obvious reasons.”
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