CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at (847) 491-4890 or [email protected]
FOR RELEASE: Immediate
COLLEGE LIFE IS FODDER FOR NEW SOAP OPERA CREATED BY UNDERGRADUATES
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Forget "Melrose Place," "Dawson's Creek" and "Beverly Hills, 90210." The buzz at Northwestern these days is about "University Place," a soap opera about college life created by Northwestern University undergraduates. The show premieres Oct. 23 at the Ryan Auditorium of the Technological Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, on the Evanston campus.
The producers of "University Place" expect a packed house for the first episode of their student-produced, student-acted and student-written soap opera. The brainchild of 20-year-old theatre major Sabrina Eisenstadt, "University Place" chronicles the lives and travails of 12 undergraduates at a fictitious university.
"You could call it a cross between 'Beverly Hills, 90210' and 'Dawson's Creek,'" says Eisenstadt who grew up watching "All My Children" and "General Hospital" with her mother. What she and her undergraduate collaborators are trying to develop is a show that all students can relate to.
"We want to establish 'University Place' as a campus tradition," says Eisenstadt. If it attracts network attention, so much the better, say members of the show's executive board.
Close to 200 people from a wide array of academic disciplines tried out for the soap last spring when casting directors Elisa Gil-Osorio and Highland Park native Chad Hodge held auditions. The two also looked through freshman "face books" and approached students on campus when they thought someone had the right "look" for the soap.
Half the selected cast turned out to be students majoring in theatre -- a less than surprising fact given Northwestern's reputation as one of the nation's best training grounds for acting. But Hodge, who did television commercials while still at Highland Park High School, was wowed by the untrained actors, like Josh Inch, who also made the cut. A senior majoring in journalism, Inch has given up a spot on Northwestern's wrestling team to allow him time to work on "University Place."
Although the makers of "University Place" plan to keep their show "light," upcoming episodes will bring troubling issues familiar to college students to the screen. Among them are date rape, alcoholism, poor grades and money problems. And high on the list of all the episodes will be the obligatory, heavy dose of romance and relationship difficulties.
The first episode will preview some of the relationship dilemmas to come: Will All-American, soccer-playing Paul leave his younger girlfriend behind for a high paying job in Silicon Valley? Will the "bad boy of University Place" win over the cautious, career-oriented Gina? Will Jamie give up the "kind-hearted brother" role and let the woman he loves know how he feels?
Only watching University Place will reveal the answers to those questions. But, in the meantime, executive producers Eisenstadt and Hodge have proven extraordinarily resourceful in producing the show on a shoestring budget. A contest among campus bands resulted in an energetic, highly professional theme song for the soap while a "bar night" at a local tavern and an "appeal to parents" last spring brought in much needed cash.
Shot on 3/4 inch videotape, the first episode was produced for roughly $4,500 (a tiny, tiny fraction of the budget for a network soap) thanks to the help of 70 unpaid students doing everything from lighting, acting, camera work and providing refreshments. The next four scripts already are written and will be shot and edited by spring quarter. All five episodes will be shown back-to-back in the spring.
Working on the soap opera has proven a greater time commitment than any of its cast members or executive board members ever imagined. Director Erika Ewers describes a schedule filled with at least one or two meetings a day, rehearsals and long weekend shooting schedules.
Actor Bill Holderman learned a basic Hollywood lesson: that shooting sessions are arduous and always take longer than expected. "Even if you have only two lines to say, you'll be on the set for six hours," he says.
But for almost everyone involved, working on "University Place" is a labor of love. More than a few call it a defining experience in their years at Northwestern. And many of the show's cast and executive board members have been bitten by the entertainment bug. More than a dozen of them are students in a course offered by the School of Speech titled "The Business of Show Business." The course is taught by L.A. entertainment lawyer Peter Nichols who flys to Chicago every other week to teach on Thursdays and Fridays.
About a dozen of the "University Place" collaborators went to Hollywood over the summer to gain a firsthand knowledge of the TV and film capital. Hodge and Holderman, for example, did internships at small production companies and talent management agencies. Actor Inch worked for an Evanston-based web publishing group from Los Angeles and did a commercial promo for the Montel Williams Show.
The show lost its first cast member to Hollywood when junior Cheryl Tsai was recruited by an agent and dropped out of school to continue working there. She has been replaced by Janet Choi, who last year worked as a regular on the MTV series "The Real World."
So the show goes on. Look for camera crews shooting around campus this fall and for all five episodes of the soap opera to be screened in the spring.
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