U of A play festival honors theater student killed in hit-and-run

Two of the short plays being featured were written by Josiah Santos, one of the three students killed in last fall's hit-and-run near campus.

Santos' dark comedy "Jack the People Hater" and his dramatic monologue "Mirror" were selected by Santos' peers for the University of Arizona School of Theatre, Film & Television's fifth annual event Thursday, March 26-Sunday, March 29.

"I think it's a gift. (Santos) was always a very generous person, so the fact that after his passing, we're still getting his gifts is magic," said Santos' friend Rayce Morland, who is directing both plays in the festival. "I just don't know how else to talk about it; it's magic. And I think the school has done a good job at ensuring that his legacy is honored."

Santos, a senior theater major, was killed Oct. 30 when he and his girlfriend, Sophia Akimi Troetel, and their friend, Katya Rosaura Castillo-Mendoza, who were in a marked crosswalk, were struck by a car on North Euclid Avenue at East Second Street. Santos and Troetel died at the scene; Castillo-Mendoza died in a hospital on Nov. 1.

UA student Louis John Artal, 19, turned himself in about an hour after the crash. Police said Artal was speeding in a 2019 Porsche Boxster and under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs at the time of the crash. Artal is facing three counts of manslaughter and other charges when he goes on trial in Superior Court on Nov. 3. 

Morland is one of the UA Live and Screened Performance students involved in this week's student-led festival, themed around the concept of brokenness, said award-winning Tucson playwright and New Directions Festival Artistic Director Elaine Romero.

"Broken could be interpreted in many ways. One play is interpreted as a broken urn, for example," said Romero, a UA theater professor. "Other plays are broken relationships, broken people, broken worlds, a broken game that leads to a relationship. So yeah, there are a lot of different kinds of broken that they explored."

Santos, described by Romero and others as a prolific playwright, submitted 10 ideas "and I remember it was a  battle: Which will we choose?" recalled Romero.

"They finally chose one called 'Mirror'," she said. "And he had also taken a playwriting class with me and he wrote a play that fit our theme, broken, called 'Jack the People Hater.' We decided as a class that we also wanted to include that piece."

Morland, who was a member with Santos of the UA improv troupe the Charles Darwin Experience, said "Jack the People Hater" represents Santos' voice and his personality.

"It is a comedy. It's set in a very hyperbolized heart. It's kind of cartoonishly hateful is the best way I can describe it," he said of the story about a guy who hates everybody and thinks the world hates him back.

"His sole job is to pick up trash," Morland said, and when Jack meets somebody and falls in love, his perception of the world changes. "Maybe he's not Jack the people hater; maybe he is something more. But then we see how the play plays with concepts about social perception and how people's personalities are changed by the world, and how the world sees them. It's very interesting."

"The Mirror," Morland said, was Santos' way of stepping out of his comfort zone and writing a purely emotional work. The play is a monologue of a mother mercilessly berating her daughter; on the surface it looks like bad parenting, but there are glimpses that what she is doing is actually benefiting her daughter. 

" 'Jack the People Hater' is kind of similar to the writing style (Santos) loves to write with. He loves outlandish, zany, goofy characters, and Jack is full of them," Morland said. "But I think for 'Mirror,' it was very new territory for him to write a grounded story that was just meant to be purely emotional, purely about one person, which part of me would like to think that he would have loved to share with the world."

In addition to coming up with the theme and curating the plays, each of which come in under 10 minutes long, students also produce the New Directions Festival, from acting and directing to working on stage design and other behind-the-scenes work. 

The eight plays and one mini-musical in the lineup will be performed as a "reading" with minimal staging, but the student actors will perform the scripts from memory.  Each of the plays will be performed every night of the festival.

"We really wanted a chance to hear all these different voices and these different perspectives," Romero said.

Romero said including Santos' works allows his classmates and friends in the school to honor him and continue collaborating with him even though he is no longer there. 

"He just had such a love of playwriting. And I just keep thinking, I just look at these ideas, and I think about him, and I think, well, there's another way in which people could collaborate with him," she said. "I wanted students to know that they could keep working with him even though he's gone, that they could continue their collaboration, and that we don't have to just move on. ...

"I'm really happy that Rayce Morland and a number of Josiah's friends are involved in these plays. Sometimes when you lose somebody, you can continue to write for them by just hearing their voice in your head, and I wanted to encourage that kind of thinking with Josiah, that we won't stop our collaboration with him."

Performances will be at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the Tornabene Theatre, 1025 N. Olive Road on the UA campus. Admission is free. 

The original works and the order in which they will be presented:

• "Jack the People Hater" by Josiah Santos, directed by Rayce Morland. Explores a broken environment.
• "Mirror," by Josiah Santos, directed by Rayce Morland. A story of fractured motherhood.
• "Rebuilding," written by Macy Lash, directed by Lindsey Beardsley. A broken board game leads to a relationship.
• "Unsent," by Maia Nastav, directed by Rachel Pazos. A broken sibling bond and a box of teenage angst.
• "Woof at the Walls," by Dawson Stenzel, directed by Ryan Feeney. A play about a broken mind.
• "Super Rich Kids," written by Lindsey Beardsley, directed by Ryan Feeney. A play about a broken friendship.
• "Something to Remember Me By," by Childs Hultquist, directed by Rachel Pazos. A broken urn leads to a “sweeping” change.'
• "Light Through the Cracks," written by Brigette Rubi, directed by Thalita DeAndrade. A reflection on a world that is damaged but still breathing.
• "Lejos de Vos," written by Alivia Alexander, directed by Thalita DeAndrade. A mini bilingual musical about a broken system.