Alex Bigus has entered two playwriting contests in his life. He has won both of them. He wrote the first as a student at Blue Valley North High School and it was presented at the Kansas State Drama Festival. The second is being performed next month as one of the six plays being presented by the Barn Players in the fifth annual “6 x 10 Play Festival.”
His play “Who Am I” will be featured along with five other original plays Dec. 7, 8 and 9 at the Barn Players, 6219 Martway in Mission, Kan. It is the story of a man and a woman who awaken with no knowledge of where they are, who they are, or why they are there. The play will be directed by Sara Crow.
“Who Am I” is the first 10-minute play Bigus has ever written.
“It is very short,” said Bigus, the 23-year-old son of Ruth and Larry Bigus.
He said writing something that short was hard for him.
“I like words. Ten minutes doesn’t lend itself to words in a way that I would usually work them. It is about using what you have to get the most information out without besieging the audience with too much exposition. You just have to set it up in a way where things make sense without needing too much explanation,” he explained.
Vida Bikales, president of the Barn Players board of directors, noted that Bigus is the Barn Players youngest playwright. He’s also appeared on its stage in one of its Barn Jr. productions.
Bigus is a 2007 graduate of BVN and a 2011 graduate of Oklahoma City University. There he earned a degree in music with a specialty in musical theater. He works as a vocal coach and director and has both performed and has been a part of production staffs in several local theaters. He has also served as an assistant director of the Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre and a show director at OCU.
Currently Bigus is an acting apprentice at the Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota, Fla., where he will be until the end of May. He has been cast as an understudy in FST’s production of “Smokey Joe’s Café” and is teaching musical theater classes for teens.
This month he’ll even get a chance to march in Sarasota’s annual Christmas parade. What he won’t get a chance to do is come to Kansas City to see his play.
“They will be working it without my input, which I think is the way it should be in theater. I think once the writer has written it … the writer should step aside and let the people whose jobs and hearts and souls are in that play to work on it,” Bigus said.
Even after winning two writing contests, he doesn’t like to enter them.
“It’s frightening to put something you’ve poured a lot of your heart into out there for others to say this isn’t quite good enough, or to just sometimes even not say anything which is always worse,” he said.
As an actor Bigus faces criticism as well, but it doesn’t bother him as much.
“Acting is an area I feel more confidence in and is an area I’m more experienced in.”
Bigus was encouraged to enter the contest by his old acting teacher Eric Magnus, who happens to be the artistic director for the Barn Players.
“I couldn’t sleep one night, which usually means my brain is too busy, so I get up and I write. That’s what I did one night and this is one of the things that came out of it. I decided to send it in and see what happens,” he said.
His “end all, be all goal” for the future is to direct.
“I’m hoping in a few years to be able to attend Penn State for my MFA (master of fine arts degree) in directing and to someday teach and direct at a collegiate level,” he said.
He loves writing, acting and directing.
“Because I love all three I can continue to do all three. Even if I’m 45 and teaching at a college somewhere, chances are I can turn around and find a community theater and go do a role in the evenings. Then of course as long as my fingers work I can continue to write. But who knows, in 10 years you might not even need your fingers for that,” he said.
Bigus said theatergoers can look forward to the playfulness of the characters when they come to see “Who Am I.”
“They are very, very lost and it’s quite interesting to read. Hopefully it will be quite interesting to watch as well.”
While he won’t be able to attend the festival, he encourages others to “go see all of the six by 10s and support everybody who writes.”
