2025 Senior Thesis Festival
Theater, Dance & Media’s Senior Thesis Festival returns for its third year, with two weeks of readings and performances in March. Writers Week, March 11-12, features staged readings of five original works by TDM seniors. Production Week, March 27-29, will showcase a solo performance on the Farkas Hall Stage.
Writers Week
Out of Reach: A Musical Drama
A TDM Senior Thesis Musical Reading by Emma Rogers
Tuesday, March 11 @ 7 PM
Farkas Hall 303
High school is Penny’s chance to reinvent her image, a fresh start. Lorelei dreams of a simple, quiet life. When their paths cross, they can’t help but want what the other has. Facing the pressures of their peers, mothers, and social media, will these young women be able to uncover their authentic truth beyond our filtered realities?
Trace Origins
A TDM Senior Thesis Play Reading by Kayla Bey
Tuesday, March 11 @ 8 PM
Farkas Hall 303
Two married women return to Brazil together to renew their wedding vows, but they quickly learn that their marriage has not been and never will be solely about them. A play about love and its absence, language and its absence, and cultural differences that are never absent; a play about persistence, loneliness, and growing old, as much as it is about happily ever after and the children that follow.
while True
A TDM Senior Thesis Musical Reading by Cas Li
Tuesday, March 11 @ 9 PM
Farkas Hall 303
Amidst a quarter-life crisis, overachieving Chinese-American tech entrepreneur Sisi jets off to their ancestral motherland in search of connection and clarity. But when their nonstop flight to Beijing quite literally refuses to stop—trapping them in an endless time loop—reality begins to fracture, pulling them through visions of magpies, ideal selves, and the echoes of what-has-been and what-could-be. Blending sci-fi, mythology, and existential philosophy, while True is a meditation on the recursive nature of becoming.
Our Friend Lyssa!
A TDM Senior Thesis Play Reading by Nia Weeks
Wednesday, March 12 @ 7 PM
Farkas Hall 303
Lyssa wants to host a dinner. Lyssa invites over five friends she hasn’t spoken to in awhile. Lyssa turns on the oven and sets the table. Lyssa hides a knife in her pocket. Lyssa is not herself tonight.
Content Warning: flashing lights, loud noises, violence
Expectations
A TDM Senior Thesis Play Reading by Jonah Sorscher
Wednesday, March 12 @ 8 PM
Farkas Hall 303
After years of unsuccessful auditioning in New York City, 26-year-old Margot returns to her childhood home to live with her parents. But when she receives a callback for a theatrical adaptation of Great Expectations, all bets are off. Racing against the dawn of adulthood and the pressures that it brings, she holes up in the attic to method act the role of Miss Havisham, a woman who has fashioned her entire life to remain trapped in a single moment of heartbreak. As fiction and reality begin to blur, so do past and present, ultimately offering the question: what happens when we can't outlive our own expectations?
Production Week
An Actor Prepares? A Fictional and Non-Definitive Guide to Acting
A TDM Senior Thesis Production by Avery Hansberger
March 27 - 29 @ 7 PM
Farkas Hall Stage
Inspired by Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares, this senior thesis follows a student learning to act under the tutelage of an acting teacher specializing in being “real”. The thesis explores different techniques and lessons pioneered by 20th-century acting teachers while questioning what it means to train as an actor.