For many Honors and Elon College fellows, college ends with a lengthy thesis that is pages and pages long. But for some fellows, the thesis process is a little more... playful.
Three Elon seniors - Emily Guernsey, Caroline Klidonas and Jared Allen - presented their original plays at the Fellows' New Works Festival last week.
Emily Guernsey is a College Fellow, and this project is part of her capstone experience. Her play toi, toujours had both english and french incorporated into it. The play translates to "Forever You" in French.
"I knew it [the play] would be about communications with cross-cultural communications," Guernsey said.
The play is about two young people who meet and fall in love, but cannot speak the same language.
"I wanted something people could hopefully relate to - ideally what people go throughout our age," Guernsey said.
Guernsey was not the only student who presented her work. Caroline Klidonas also presented her work titled Contra: A Life. The play had three movements, each telling a different story of a modern day fairy tale.
"I started looking into the history of fairy tales and I just became intrigued how when they switched from being told orally to being written down, they went through such a transition of just becoming way more simplified," Klidonas said.
Both writers said that writing and producing a show was a very personal experience.
"I mean it's like a piece of your heart ripped out and out on stage," Klidonas said. "It's insane."
Guernsey described her show as her "baby" something she had been working on and taking care of for the past two years.
All three students hope that their hard work and that these original works will be part of their legacy as they depart to go beyond Elon.