Gallery • 15 Photos

Saahir Mawani

Sophomore Esther Kim interacts with an audience member prior to the show beginning. Throughout the play, the ensemble members act as the narrators of the show, telling a story made up in their imagination.

Theater’s Silver Company will perform its spring show “The Book of Dog,” Feb. 27-March 1 at 7 p.m., as well as an understudy show on March 1 at 2 p.m. The show follows the life of Marvin the dog (senior Grant Koch), and the family that takes him in. 

“‘The Book of Dog’ is not a complicated plot,” McGraw said. “It’s like if you put ‘Marley and Me’ and ‘A Dog’s Purpose’ on stage. It covers themes of love: love that we have for each other [and] love that we have for our fine furry friends.”

The audition process for the show consisted of three days of cold reads — reading from the script with little-to-no rehearsal time. Once auditions concluded and roles were announced, the actors began rehearsing. In the production, the cast will use puppets to represent the dogs. Koch said his high level of comfort with the puppets is because of a previous production of “Avenue Q” he was in.

“I had experiences on how to act with a puppet on stage — how to use the puppet, translating ,” Koch said. “It’s a different style of puppetry, because our puppet is run with two sticks instead of arm sticks and a hand, but having worked with puppets on stage, it didn’t freak me out as much as it did for the others.”

Throughout the show, McGraw said the ensemble will be interacting with the audience as little kids. Prior to the show, the audience is invited to play games with the ensemble. Throughout the set, the ensemble members will be playing in the set of a city park, in which the floor of the black box will be filled with chalk drawings. 

“I want to fill the staging space with chalk art just to send home the idea that these are kids playing in a park,” McGraw said. “If we have any kids [in the audience,] or kids at heart, if they want to participate in some chalk art, they can play hopscotch with our actors — they can draw that butterfly just to help them connect to this space in that way. We want to invite the audience into the space.”

When actors are not playing their understudy roles, they will be part of the ensemble. Understudy and ensemble member Beckham Sams said his goal is to make a younger kid smile, as he wants them to feel the connection between the people and the dogs. 

“Most people have dogs, and if they don’t, then they probably love dogs,” Sams said. “Dogs have meaning in peoples lives, and it resonates with our audience in the sense that it is something that people can understand and can care about, even if they’re really little. People understand the feeling of being connected with a dog.”

McGraw said the most powerful aspect of the show could be encapsulated in one of the lines from the opening: “Remind them of love and hope.” 

“This show has a lot of imagination — a lot of movement,” McGraw said. “Puppetry is slept on as an art form, especially in theater. It’s a great challenge for actors to treat a really weird looking dog puppet like it’s a real life dog in order to have an authentic performance. It’s going to be a different way of performing. It’s always good to keep them out of their comfort zone.”