Colline Laninga Rocks Tennis, Classes, and an Awesome Senior Project

You think your senior year is hard?  Try doing that, along with directing a play, being in two others, doing post season training workouts for your sports team, instructing swimming, and having a social life all at the same time.
 
“Plus I rock,” says senior drama studies major Colline Laninga of her extremely packed lifestyle.  “Once in a while I take a class, too.”
 
Laninga, who just turned 20 earlier this month, has a past, present, and future consumed by theater.  Performing since she was five, she is about to graduate after directing her senior play, The Seven Keys to Baldpate.
 
After deciding on majoring in theater, she sped through her college years and has set her sights on obtaining a MFA in acting after SUNY Purchase. 

 
Laninga’s production is set to go on next weekend, February 10, 11, and 12.  Seven Keys is an immersive melodrama with a cast of nine that tells the story of an overemotional writer in the middle of a bet.  Throughout a winter night he spends in a summer cabin, he encounters characters and situations similar to those of his novels.  With robbery, ghosts, murder and a twist ending, the play promises to captivate and entertain an audience.
 
Laninga says it was David Bassuk’s directing class in her junior year that introduced her to the idea of immersive plays.  This involves the audience members being seated on the stage, right in the middle of the action, and interacting with the cast.  A play like this, written by the 1920s playwright George M. Cohen, has no production rights, making it free to produce.
 
That’s lucky too, because the budget for students, including sets, costumes, and props, are all out of pocket purchases.  Directors rely on ticket sales alone to make back the money they spend, and maybe even turn a profit.  Laninga set her budget at $400, and she has managed to stick to it pretty easily.
 
“My uncle built the doors for me at no cost, and I split the cost of material for the play with my mom,” she says.  On stage there are four doorways that characters use periodically throughout the play, which proved to be the most challenging part of the set design. 
 
 “There is nothing more rewarding,” says Laninga of her current project, “than watching someone take your vision and run with it.” She says she is on cloud nine after having recently moved into her theater and finishing her set, lighting and costumes. 
 
She’s learned a lot in her years at Purchase.  The importance of knowing background on the people you cast was extremely relevant after an incident that resulted in having to replace the male lead of her play during winter break.  She stresses the need for support from friends, and says that she doesn’t know what she would do without her assistant director, Ethan Whitehead.
 
“Theater,” she says, “is the most awesome experience that is guaranteed to take 10 years off your life due to stress.”  Though she prefers acting, she would never say no to directing, and hopes to do more of both in the future.  She encourages everyone who reads this article to attend their play, and threatens that their computers will explode if they don’t!

** Photo credit: Joshua Hernandez**