Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Play It Up

Classes may not be in session, but the work of three Dartmouth College undergrads speaks for itself this week. Ariela Anhalt (pictured) and Sarah Laeuchli, ’11, and Tabetha Xavier, ’10, are winners of the Eleanor Frost Competition and Ruth & Loring Dodd Contest, respectively, and their penned expressions reach audiences through staged readings and a fully produced play this weekend. Each emotive one-act explores family relationships: In Anhalt’s “For You,” a gay son hopes for his dying father’s approval; an art-school dropout moves in with her grandmother in Laeuchli’s “The Rose Garden”; and a middle-aged man loses his grip when his wife leaves him in Xavier’s “Sit-In.” If the festival’s past winners — including The Cider House Rules playwright Peter Parnell and actress-writer Mindy Kaling of “The Office” — are any indicator, these writers are on the rise.