Imagine yourself minding your own business, working minimum wage at a local coffee shop, when you notice a strange substance in a public restroom. It’s unlike anything you’ve seen before, he’s growing and he seems to have an appetite.
Pick your favorite “I don’t get paid enough for this” meme because that’s what’s happening in Cal Walker. That thing in the bathroomincluding Rice University’s first student-run theater company, The Rice Players, will premiere this weekend.
Alayne Ziglin, who says they’ve been doing theater for as long as they can remember, is now a junior at Rice and serves as both coordinator of the Rice Players and producer of the play. According to Ziglin, Walker’s play attracted attention from the company as a new work and for its inclusion of non-binary and underrepresented main characters.
“We really liked it,” says Ziglin, who uses “they/them” pronouns. “There is a very large queer community at Rice, and we are also very excited about having black actors on stage and playing roles specifically aimed at these marginalized groups.”
In the play, two baristas at Cool Beans Coffee discover they have to “navigate the capitalist world around them as well as this horrible, unnatural thing in the bathroom,” Ziglin explains. One is Tess, a black woman “in a subordinate role who is more competent than her boss,” and the other is Dill, a non-binary character “who just wants to go home.”
Rice University sophomore Paola Hoffman, who plays Dill in the production, says that although the protagonists tend to be “big, bright and bold,” Dill is far from that person when we meet them.
“(Dill is) definitely calmer, definitely more sober, definitely sarcastic…There’s a sense of defeat about them that I felt through this scenario,” says Hoffman, who uses those pronouns. “It’s the feeling of someone who doesn’t know exactly where their path in life is and is just trying to – without even trying to understand it – just trying to get through day to day.”
Unfortunately for Dill, they find themselves in a situation straight out of a 1950s B-movie that challenges their mentality, as Hoffman says, “I’m not sure what I can do about it “.
Like Ziglin, Hoffman and the scene go back a long way; in this case, first year. Hoffman continued to do theater throughout her time at an all-girls college, where she says she played many leading roles – male roles in particular.
“I had a deeper voice, so that made me better for the roles,” Hoffman says.
That thing in the bathroom marks Hoffman’s return to the stage after a five-year hiatus (forgoing theater in high school and devoting the free time of their freshman year of college to club soccer). Interest in returning to theater led Hoffman to The Rice Players’ Play in a Day, and a positive experience with the 24-hour play production challenge led him to That thing in the bathroom.
Hoffman adds that read the synopsis of the play and see horror comedy, capitalism And The blob it was like “three home runs in a row.”
“I like scary, scary, weird, weird things, and I like comedies,” Hoffman says. “Horror comedy is an interesting mix. You have to keep a light tone, but you also have to have moments where there is a threat or a palpable issue… Reading capitalism meets The blob, I wondered, what are the true horrors of this world right now? Bad working conditions and things that eat away at people.
For Ziglin, the play’s workplace will be familiar to people, adding that audiences will likely identify with the workers because “at one point, we have been each of them.”
“For me, the play is really about being part of the working class and how workers in society are beaten at every opportunity,” Ziglin says. “It’s really exemplified by Dill and Tess, who are both more competent than their boss and more willing to work to fix the problem in the bathroom (but) they can’t.”
The fact that Dill and Tess are part of marginalized groups highlights this oppression and is a key element that Ziglin and Hoffman believe makes the play stand out.
“It’s very important that the actors embody the identity they’re written to be in the script, because it’s a subversion of normal horror tropes,” says Ziglin.
Hoffman points to the horror story “in which homosexuals are relegated to monsters” and the well-known trope “that marginalized characters die first.”
“Specifically, in horror, the last survivors are usually white, white cis heterosexuals,” Hoffman adds. “I believe the writer has gone out of his way to make sure that is not the story of this play.”
The role of Dill is the first non-binary role Hoffman has played, and Ziglin says Walker’s play is the first time they’ve seen a non-binary character written in a series. For Hoffman, the importance of the character goes even further because even though Dill is in danger – this is a horror story after all – it’s not because of his identity. Their identity is simply a fact of who they are.
“They are allowed to exist as trans people without it ever being questioned, without it ever becoming a point of contention. They’re allowed to exist in a fantasy scenario and they’re allowed to exist, and I think that’s really important, especially now, for people to see that,” Hoffman says. “It’s great to see more roles being created that specifically allow actors of these identities to enter these venues.”
That Thing in the Bathroom is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on November 17 and 18 at Hamman Hall, Rice University, 6100 Main. You can learn more about the Rice Players here And here. Free (with donations encouraged).
