Kate Franklin, who is a student in the Department of Theatre, has written and directed a play for her senior capstone project that aims to explore some important and relevant issues on college campuses. Rules of Play: College Edition, which is a comedic and feminist play, aims to break down Greek life, hookup culture, and sexual assault on these campuses. Stemming from her research that found the current plays on this topic failed to challenge the status quo, Kate’s play aims to begin conversations on how to change this.

Kate, who received a CAMD Student Grant for Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity to support her work, decided to address the topics of Greek life, hookup culture, and sexual assault due to personal experiences combined with her theatrical training and knowledge.

“I wanted to create a piece of art that really lays out the social and cultural factors that allow for rape culture to manifest,” Kate said. “My research that this play grew from argued that the reason existing plays fail to challenge the status quo is because they focus on one person’s story (with one protagonist and one antagonist). I argued that to really tackle this issue, a play needed to be written using a feminist Brechtian framework, which I utilized in Rules of Play: College Edition.”

Due to the pandemic, the play was filmed – socially-distanced and with masks – and will be streaming on November 16. The cast and crew, including actors, stage manager, lighting designer, sound designer, graphic designer, marketer, videographers, and editors, are all Northeastern students. Following the performance release, Kate is hosting a variety of post performance discussions for different audiences (one for survivors, one for fraternity brothers, one on political advocacy, and a talkback with the cast and crew). Sign up to watch the production here.