Some parents say their children walked only so they could run, but Emily Finch\u2019s mother tells people her daughter learned to read only so she could write.<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess that\u2019s pretty telling,\u201d Finch \u201926 (CLAS) says of the characterization. \u201cI\u2019ve been enamored with storytelling for so long, however I could get it. I certainly consider myself a big reader, but that can\u2019t exist for me without, also, creation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Finch says she carries creative projects in her head, throughout the day in spare moments ruminating on how a piece of dialog could run smoother, how a transition could bridge sturdier. As she tries to fall asleep, of course that\u2019s when puppets burst in, an imaginative spin on how a tale could be better told.<\/p>\n
For the last two years, the Greek mythology of Eros and Psyche has consumed most open cerebral file space, along with a trio of folktales about a hedgehog, white bear, and venomous snake, as the English and individualized studies major looks to cap a University Scholar project<\/a> on a grand scale.<\/p>\n \u201cI keep going back and forth between the fear and joy of it,\u201d she says of an upcoming performance of two of her recent works. \u201cThere are moments when it\u2019s scary or even difficult to think about. Often with things that I\u2019ve created, I don\u2019t want to look at them after they\u2019ve left my body and are on the page. So, going back, over and over, looking at these scripts has been a learning experience to become comfortable with that process.\u201d<\/p>\n Having written a couple dozen plays, plus a couple dozen more, over the last five years, Finch can call herself a playwright, but after the April 10-11 performances of \u201cEros and Psyche\u201d and \u201cHans My Hedgehog,\u201d she can call herself a playwright whose vision was performed on the Harriet S. Jorgensen stage.<\/p>\n Finch didn\u2019t know about the scholarly Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index system that groups similar folktales by narrative patterns and motifs when she was a Hamden first grader. That came much later.<\/p>\n Rather, she was the young student who on library-media center days gravitated to the Greek and Roman mythology section to check out books on Hades and Dionysus, Apollo and Diana, hardcovers and softcovers that hadn\u2019t been touched in years.<\/p>\n \u201cMythology is so different from much of the children\u2019s literature that I was seeing,\u201d she says. \u201cThese were stories where the stakes were always so high. I remember loving Perseus and his whole story. He slays Medusa and rescues the princess from the sea monster.\u201d<\/p>\n In high school, she played Tiresias, the blind prophet in the play \u201cAntigone,\u201d and learned about an independent study the assistant director, someone in the grade above her, was doing with the school\u2019s drama teacher to learn about dramaturgy and directing.<\/p>\n She thought it would be fun for her senior year, a way to play while making a play before the rigors of college.<\/p>\n \u201cI wrote probably 15 or 20 short plays over the course of this independent study, and then I sat down and started writing about women in Greek mythology, what I saw as the pitfalls they seemed doomed to fall into and repeat, and it turned into a full-length, two-act play,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Her teacher was impressed \u2013 \u201cYou need to hear this out loud,\u201d she told Finch.<\/p>\n They organized a table reading, 25 friends in a circle giving voice to characters bemoaning the monsters they encountered, scapegoating they endured, and evil stepmothers in their midst.<\/p>\n Then her teacher chimed in – this show must be staged.<\/p>\n \u201cGetting to spotlight so many of my friends who I had seen get passed over for roles and people who I\u2019d never really met but shined at the audition, and then getting to see everyone grow in a way they might not have otherwise, that was the moment when I thought, \u2018Oh, this is something I could do,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cI always liked writing, and I\u2019d always liked being in plays, but the idea of bringing the two together just did not occur to me or seemed out of reach.\u201d<\/p>\n While Finch says she didn\u2019t know what she might do with an English<\/a> degree from UConn, picking it as a major nonetheless was a natural choice. After a successful submission to a student-sponsored one-act play festival, she gave serious thought to adding a double major in theater studies.<\/p>\n The only catch: she didn\u2019t want to act, she wanted to write.<\/p>\n And without a defined track for aspiring playwrights at UConn, Finch says she discovered that the Individualized and Interdisciplinary Studies Program<\/a> allowed her to create her own, in this case blending relevant classes in the School of Fine Arts and Neag School of Education, alongside those in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n Her personalized program – creating and educating for the stage and screen – has included classes in film writing and acting for nonmajors, and seminars in dramaturgy and on the existing corpus of plays, among so much more.<\/p>\n Finch says the networking she did as part of her individualized major put the University Scholar Program<\/a> in her grasp, along with the Office of Undergraduate Research\u2019s IDEA Grant<\/a>, both of which supported her latest and biggest project.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s always the fear with something you\u2019ve created that it won\u2019t make sense to anyone but you or that no one else will like it,\u201d she says. \u201cBut there\u2019s been such a community supporting me through this, which has been so lovely.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd it\u2019s so wonderful to be in a rehearsal space again,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt\u2019s not something I\u2019ve done a whole lot of in the past two years. There\u2019s something exhilarating about having a script out and watching the actors play and work with it. There have been times I\u2019ve forgotten that I had anything to do with writing it.\u201d<\/p>\nMythology Brought Her to Playwriting<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Double Major: English and Individualized Studies<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Telling Stories with Puppets<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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