This weekend, Ohio University's Lost Flamingo Company will show audience members differing perspectives of beauty with Reasons to be Pretty, the group's last show of the quarter.
The four-person performance details the conflicts and drama surrounding the lives of two young couples who have been friends for years. When one man says to the other that his girlfriend's face is regular
it sets off a chain of events that lead to difficulties within both relationships.
Reasons to Be Pretty is the life death and not-really-resurrection of a relationship said director Chelsey Pippin, an OU junior studying theater performance. It's all about falling in and out of love and how people deal with that in all kinds of different ways.
Krista Cickovskis, a sophomore studying theater performance, plays Steph, the character whose face is called ordinary. She said the show is really about how beauty plays a role in relationships.
The important thing about it is that the person that loves you thinks you're beautiful
Cickovskis said. Because it's everything else about you that translates into aesthetics. So when they lose that faith in physical beauty
you can't help but feel like they lost their faith in you as a person.
Cast member Arian Pal, a freshman studying theater performance who plays Steph's boyfriend Greg, said playwright Neil Labute had a direct message.
All four of us in the show have a completely different view of what beauty is
and then my character sums everything up in the end and says that beauty doesn't freaking matter
Pal said. We as people
especially in the United States
make beauty out to be something that's so important in our lives
and it's not.
Aside from the aesthetic message, the show is unique because of its own minimal physical structure, Pippin said. The set is made of black boxes that are moved around to signify furniture and other structures. The back wall will be a chalkboard, and audience members will have the opportunity to draw on the wall. Cickovskis said the simpler set helps bring out the point of the show.
I think you could almost picture (the show) anywhere you are. I actually think it serves as less of a distraction
Cickovskis said. I think it makes the words that much more potent to the audience.
