Student's one-act play read at La MaMa Theater Club in NYC

Posted 04/28/01

From New York City to Paris, Tara Dairman of Oceanside, N.Y., a senior at Dartmouth College, is poised to make a splash with her creative writing. Dairman delved into the world of theater last month when her original one-act play, The Question House, was selected for reading at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in New York City.

Dairman, who graduated from Oceanside High School in 1997, is the daughter of Fred and Barbara Dairman.

The comic play depicts the lives of seven people who work in and around a house that previously was home to an occult temple. For reasons related to this prior use, people in the house may speak only in the form of a question or risk being "struck down by the hand of God," said Dairman.

Dairman wrote the play last year for Dartmouth's Eleanor Frost Playwriting Contest, where it was a winner. Dartmouth sponsored a performance of Dairman's play last May.

Then, on a whim, she submitted The Question House to the La MaMa Experimental Theater, a 40-year-old establishment known for its artistic experimentation and cutting edge productions. More than five months later, Dairman received a call saying that her play had been selected as one of nine original scripts to be featured in the theater's "Experiments '01 Reading Series."

"La MaMa is a pretty well established force in New York theater...I was just really lucky with all of this," said Dairman.

Although not a full-scale production, Dairman enjoyed having her play interpreted by another director and cast. "All of the actors just showed a lot of personality...it was interesting to be involved in the process," she said.

A creative writing major, Dairman has had numerous short stories and other works published in The Dartmouth Contemporary and The Stonefence Review, campus literary journals. Last year, she received grant funding for a trip to Paris, where she conducted background research on a novel tentatively titled "The Lesbian's Guide to Paris."

Upon graduation, Dairman plans to either attend graduate school or work in New York. Either way, she will continue to hone her creative writing skills.