Hot take: any story can be improved by adding katanas. Characters using guns? Unoriginal, depressingly realistic, hard to imagine anything better than John Wick. Katanas? Effortlessly cool, stylish and such a mystique.
In NEXTStage Repertory’s production of Qui Nguyen’s play “Soul Samurai,” which concludes this Sunday, Nov. 3, Centenary’s students turn Kutz Theater into a post-apocalyptic Brooklyn teeming with vampires, shoguns, samurai and supernatural gangs. The creatures’ weapons range from fangs to nunchucks to — awww yeah — katanas.
It sounds more like a video game than a stage play. But to the student cast and crew, that’s the whole point.
“‘Soul Samurai’ is a very ‘in your face’ kind of show, and being in the black box and performing so close to the audience only makes that more literal,” said freshman Taylor Albrecht, who plays the characters of Burnout, Avory and the Stranger.
The script moves fast, timed like an action movie intermixed with horror, spaghetti western and comedy overtones. Centenary Stage general manager Chris Young, a Centenary graduate and also the director and fight choreographer of “Soul Samurai,” estimates that there are about 12 full fight scenes in the script.
“It can be whatever the hell it wants to be.”
It’s a far cry from theatrical classics like “The Tempest,” which NEXTStage will produce in February 2025. But that’s all part of the plan at Centenary. Within the vast span of Centenary’s programming, “Soul Samurai” fits in as the wild child of NEXTStage’s oeuvre — a show where actors can drop the Shakespearean elocution and study the blade, albeit with modern swagger.
“We like to choose material that is going to stretch [the students] in a lot of different ways,” Young said.
“It can be off the wall and crazy and so much fun.”
This is the fifth Qui Nguyen play that NEXTStage has produced. Originally written in 2010, it was revised and republished in early 2024.
Nguyen’s work holds a special meaning for Young, who first met Nguyen at Ohio University. Young was in the final year of earning his MFA, and Nguyen had come to OU to workshop his new play, “War is F**king Awesome.”
The play hit Young like a system shock. The outlandish script called on Young to play a dozen different roles, including a baby, a ninja, an American GI in Vietnam, an actual WWII biplane, a Hitlerbot and a zombie.
“It really was like, oh my God, theater can be this. It can be just off the wall and crazy and so much fun,” Young said. “It can be whatever the hell it wants to be.”
Puppets, Monsters and Cinematic Influences
That gleeful, medium-bending outlandishness shows up in all of Nguyen’s scripts. NEXTStage’s production leans into those elements that feel far outside the realm of traditional theater. “Six Rounds of Vengeance,” the company’s previous Nguyen play, featured a monstrous 12-foot puppet with glowing red eyes.
“Soul Samurai” includes smaller puppets as well as over 20 animated projections, including an ending credits animation styled after Marvel movies. These special effects are the creation of Jon Young, a 3D game artist by day who helps with his brother’s shows on the side.
That cinematic influence oozes through the show’s aesthetic. The costumes and song choices reflect 90s hip hop and iconic images from 2000s film: “Blade,” “Kill Bill” and every movie with a martial arts training montage.
Ironically, the show’s cinematic influences posed a cultural stumbling block at first.
“As I am much younger than the playwright and our director, I do not have the same attachment or understanding of the movies and television references being made,” said Liana Wallace, a sophomore majoring in costume design and, fittingly, the show’s costume designer. “The good news is, there are easy ways to remedy familiarity.”
And it can even be fun, looking through the film and fashion trends of previous decades.
Student Run Show Makes Big, Bold Choices
The students pour themselves into their performances, starting with the plentiful fight choreography. That took a lot of rehearsal time, with the actors practicing their moves diligently to make the sequences fast and fluid.
With so much physicality involved, accidents are bound to happen. Sophomore Jacoby Stewart, who plays Boss 2k and Marcus, got hit in the face during one fight rehearsal. But he reports it as a good thing.
“Before then, I was kind of out of it because we’ve run it so many times,” Stewart said. “At that moment, I remembered what this show was all about.”
Slip-ups can happen with the special effects, too. The show calls for stage blood effects — a lot of stage blood effects. On opening night, one rogue splash managed to hit someone in the sixth row. Fortunately, fake blood is much easier to wash out than the real deal. Viewers in the front row receive complimentary disposable ponchos, just in case.
When blades aren’t swinging, the actors’ performances have to bring the same dynamic energy and power.
“It’s a world that’s bigger than life,” Chris Young said.
He encourages the actors to push past instinctive self-consciousness into those dramatic character moments.
“You can’t be afraid to make those big, bold choices.”
Boldness Takes Guts
Through the course of the play’s production, the actors have found theirs.
Take the show’s antagonist, Lady Snowflake. She’s played by Erin Clark, a sophomore majoring in musical theater. This is her first time playing a villain role.
“Working with the directors and my cast members provided me with a safe space to be able to push myself into the realm of acting that I did not know I was capable of doing,” Clark said.
Then there’s the protagonist, Dewdrop. She’s played by Viviana Mendez, a junior majoring in performance studies. Dewdrop is Mendez’s first leading role.
She mentions her character’s combination of determination and vulnerability, similar to an actor stepping into the lead for the first time.
“I worked extremely hard for Dewdrop, and had to stop doubting myself,” she said. Mendez hopes “to know I can do anything as long as I believe in myself,” once the show is over.
“She is the backbone of the show,” Young said. “Watching [the students] grow and discover themselves and what they’re capable of through this work is… it’s incredible. It’s incredible. They do such a great job.”
NEXTStage is a Family
Four years after the pandemic shuttered theaters nationwide, Centenary students are especially appreciative of the ability to perform live. Many of them described experiences doing performances or readings over Zoom, an alienating medium that sapped their love of performance.
The status of theater is still fluid. Ticket numbers haven’t yet returned to their previous numbers, and audience patterns have changed. Fewer people reserve tickets in advance, for instance. Some students foresee audience size increasing year by year as people reacquaint themselves with live entertainment. Others worry that theater will have to evolve to compete with media consumption habits that now lean digital.
Renewed Appreciation for Live Theater Lingers
“Everything seems more meaningful now in ways I did not necessarily feel before,” said Wallace, the costume designer.
Their reasons for gratitude vary. For some, live performance gives the chance to network with professionals, especially in the equity productions by Centenary Stage Company.
It “allows us to escape. It allows us to understand that, even though the world may be bad, we could still bring positivity to others,” said senior Kai Vialva, a musical theater major who plays Grandmaster Mack, T-Bone and Online.
For many, one reason emerges above the others — community.
After the gauntlet of producing a show together, the long process of moving from casting to memorizing lines to choreography, rehearsals and finally, the stage, a crew forms bonds and memories to last a lifetime.
And in the year 2024, post-pandemic and pre-who-knows-what’s-next, it’s also about hope.
In the words of Danny Paternina, Jr., a performance studies major playing Cert, “I hope to keep telling this story, as it’s one I truly cherish. I want to put this story out to the world and hopefully inspire others to look into theater more. For my cast, I want them all to shine and celebrate the pseudo-family we’ve built in the last month. As for the audience, I want everyone to have one hell of a good time, and to walk out saying ‘that was f—ing awesome.’”
See “Soul Samurai” at the Kutz Theatre in Lackland Performing Arts Center, located at Centenary University, 715 Grand Avenue in Hackettstown. Information and tickets at https://www.centenarystageco.org/soul-samurai.
Chip O'Chang is an educator, fiction writer, and lifelong resident of New Jersey. He has also written for My Life Publications and NJ Indy. He lives in the NJ Skylands with his partner, two cats, and and a bearded dragon.
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
- Chip O'Chang, Contributing Writerhttps://ridgeviewecho.com/author/chip-ochang-contributing-writer/
