Emily Nash-Gray teaches three University of Idaho Fundamentals of Public Speaking classes and is on track to get a Masters of Fine Arts degree in UI’s theater program. Nash-Gray is a mom and a wife too, which seems to be the only similarity she has with her character in UI’s latest mainstage production.
Nash-Gray plays Becky Foster in the UI Department of Theatre Arts’ third mainstage production of the school year — led solely by students — “Becky’s New Car.”
Becky, who has been married for 28 years and has a 26-year-old son, is an employee at a car dealership. One day, a widower named Walter Flood comes looking for a car and assumes Becky is a widow. Without correcting him, Becky begins her double life.
“She realizes she’s missing something and she doesn’t know what that is,” Nash-Gray said. “Walter pulls the rug out from under her.”
Zac Curtis, the play’s director, is in his last semester of the MFA theater program.
“This is a mid-life crisis play,” Curtis said. ” … It’s in finding the route that’s right. She’s hit a roadblock.”
“Becky’s New Car” is a comedy too. Curtis said Steve, a mopey, depressing car salesman and co-worker of Becky, offers comic relief for the play. Her son Chris plays a goofy, college bum as well.
“It combines humor with touching moments,” Curtis said.
Nash-Gray said Becky begins to make irrational choices in her quest to regain control of her life, which is comic and tragic.
“As an actor, you want to play the extremes — make them laugh and cry in the same 15 minutes,” Nash-Gray said.
Other challenges for Nash-Gray include direct audience interaction, quick costume changes, little to no scene change and a 60-page script that she said is “90-percent Becky.”
“Becky bounces between four different worlds mid-sentence,” Curtis said.
She appears in work clothes, crosses the stage and changes into another outfit. At one point, Nash-Gray said she does a costume change on stage, with assistance from the audience.
“The play never stops,” Curtis said. “(We have to) move very smoothly — it’s unconventional.”
Without pausing, the play even jumps through time.
“It starts where she is telling the story for you — reliving — from her perspective and how she’s got through a present moment,” Nash-Gray said. “Two-thirds of the way into the script, she starts to lose control and keeps telling the story (and eventually comes) to point where the audience and Becky come to present time together. In the end, Becky doesn’t even know what happens.”
“Becky’s New Car” shows at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday in the Hartung Theater. General admission is $10, UI faculty and staff is $8 and UI students get in free. Tickets can be purchased at the door or at 208.885.7212.
“(‘Becky’s New Car’) is story of someone that recognizes that life is totally living them,” Nash-Gray said. ” … It’s not that (Becky’s) unhappy, she realizes the things that she once had have gone by the wayside and are lost somewhere.”