Kellams: You might imagine with a title like "Love/Sick," with a slash between love and sick, John Cariani play would approach the ebbs and flows of romance, attraction and loss. You would be correct. Cariani and his work of nine vignettes addressing affection and passion will lift the curtain on the 2026-2027 University of Arkansas theatre season.
Yesterday, Morgan Hicks, Shatori Watson and Patrick Campbell came to the Anthony and Susan Hui News Studio. Each is directing three of those nine vignettes for the production that will be on stage from Sept. 25 through Oct. 4. Shatori and Patrick are MFA directing candidates in the University of Arkansas Theatre Department, and Morgan Hicks is an assistant professor in the department. Morgan says working as one of three directors on this play is invigorating.
“I think it's so fun. It's great. It honestly is great. We each have three of the vignettes within the nine that make up "Love/Sick," and we are rather compartmentalized. And now we're like at the stage where we're bringing the whole cast together, which has been really fun.”
Kellams: So let's talk about these vignettes. I opened this up to any and each of you. How did the vignettes work? How are they related?
“I think we sort of talked in the large group about common themes and like those threads that weave in and out and echoes that show up in one scene and then are reflected again in another and another. And those big universal questions of love and connection and wanting to find ways to make things work, even sometimes when maybe they're not going to work. And so yeah, all of those common questions are showing up in all of the scenes, but in really different ways because they're like very specific relationships in each one.”
Kellams: So the title is "Love/Sick." Now, lovesick itself can be a word, but the way this is titled there is the what? The slash in there.
“Love. Sick. So you could be love. You could be lovesick. You could be sick with love.”
“Yeah, you could be all those things. And I think that was something that we also talked about in rehearsal process of what did it mean to have that slash there and it not be just the one word lovesick. And in some of the vignettes, it really does showcase some form of sickness, or rather say like mental illness, that has to do with the overall theme of love and how that affects the world that they're living in.
“But in the true John Cariani world, it is sort of like larger than life, right? And so these illnesses are not something that you would regularly see on a day to day basis, but they are sort of like exaggerations of these big feelings that they're feeling in between.”
Kellams: So unrequited love. Obsession.
“Yeah. All of them. All those things for sure.”
“There's like the idea in John Cariani plays where he takes a very, very relatable idea, a very relatable concept, and then he abstracts it to a metaphor. And that's kind of to me where I see some of the sickness of like, oh, they're people that really, really like each other and are on the brink of saying, I love you, but they can't hear, like all of a sudden they've got selective deafness or they can't quite be present in the way that they would like to be present because of this thing that we think of as a metaphor, but is actually like very literal for some of these characters. So he is such a whimsical writer, but then he also touches on these very relatable, very human experiences.”
Kellams: Will we in the audience see these vignettes come across, I don't know if chronological is the right word, but we'll see them in sequence?
“Yeah, we will see them in sequence. There is an overarching, I suppose, lifespan to a traditional or what we think of as traditional relationships. So it kind of goes from love at first sight to getting married to having kids to a divorce. But there's also something really interesting and charming about it being more universal than that and a little bit cyclical. And I don't want to go much past that. But yeah, we do see them in sequence in the show.”
“There's a beautiful line at the end in just the stage direction that says like, we're always ending, we're always beginning. And so like the beginning of the play is mirrored at the very end of the play. So you can kind of imagine like these cycles begin in over and over and over again in our lifetimes and in all lifetimes.”
Kellams: Tell me about the cast. How many are in the cast?
“There's 12 total in the ensemble. Six of them are appearing in two different scenes, and then six of them only appear in one scene. So there are some characters that are not characters, some actors that play multiple characters.”
Kellams: So each of you has three vignettes. So what's the communication to, are you seeking a uniformity or it's nine different vignettes, so it's okay if it's nine different sort of atmospheres?
“When we began rehearsals, we began together. And so we sort of laid a foundation for what the through line of the show would be. So in that way, we are pretty uniform in the way that we, and the way that the show is being sort of like the tone that's being set. We did have our own separate rehearsals, but now, like Patrick said, we're in the groove of putting and piecing things together rather.”
“Yeah. And working together for transitions and sharing designers. And so there is a not a uniformity or uniformity, but like a we're in the same vocabulary in the play. But yeah, there's like uniqueness in each of the different scenes. And so we're not trying to like overlay so that they're all identical.
“But yeah, there's a lot of shared energy, especially with like those transitions and the beautiful musical score that our sound designer and our senior designer actually composed some of our music. Michael Aria. So yeah, there's this beautiful, I would say, theatrical vocabulary that we share.”
Kellams: When you're thinking about love or "Love/Sick," it might conjure up ideas of nostalgia, but it might also conjure up some ideas of self-awareness. What's it going to be like for those of us in the audience?
“I would say that there is at least one moment in each of the vignettes where that mirror is really held up to the audience of, oh, okay, we had a great time laughing through this. There's something a little bit quirky, a little bit different from our reality that we can kind of laugh at. And then we're kind of faced with the harsh reality behind it. And I think it'll be interesting to see how the audience responds to where those moments are. Here we go.”
“Yeah, we were listening to the transition music yesterday and talking about like the quality that it provides. And it really does allow us to sort of sit in the final moments of each of the vignettes in a way that allows us to little process a little bit and think of where that connects to us individually as an audience member, I think.
“So there's like just enough familiar and unfamiliar in each of the pieces that I think, yeah, they will recognize ourselves in there and sometimes in the good way and sometimes in the oh, that's too bad, I recognize myself in there kind of way.”
Kellams: With a traditional narrative, we know it follows this line. We know the ending. We know what's going to happen, unfortunately, to Willy Loman. We know the story at the end of "Hamilton" or whatever. With nine vignettes, is there a traditional sort of narrative following or ending?
“I think there's a traditional theme. I think that we live in the same world, but each vignette does have a beginning, middle and end. And then the first scene and the last scene sort of put a pretty bow on the present that is "Love/Sick." But other than that, I do believe they hold their own sort of stardust in that way.”
Kellams: Of course, theater is always collaborative, actors working with actors, with the director, the crew, stage lighting. Have you ever had something that's this kind of collaborative where you've got two co-directors?
“So I have, actually. The first show I had ever directed was "Almost, Maine," which is the sister of "Love/Sick." And that one had its own director for each vignette. So that one was even more collaboration in that aspect because each director had to decide on one through line idea of what they, how they wanted the show to be sort of conducted. So this has been a really fun process for me because it's, I mean, it's true to the roots of how I started.”
Kellams: Patrick?
“I have co-directed before, but only in a pair. And it was typically on a musical. So one of us was directing, one of us was directing, choreographing and kind of worked in tandem in that sort of sense. But I share the same sentiment as Shatori. It has been so exciting and so, so fun to bounce ideas off of each other and then implement those ideas and get inspired by each other.
And we had our designer run this past week, and getting to see each other's work full out was really, it was inspiring. It was exciting and made us want to kind of go back into our rooms and, oh, I saw this, and I might want to implement something that can tie this together. So yeah, it's been really exciting.”
“I have had a chance to co-direct quite a few times, and it's a little bit different because you're both, on a traditional piece, you're both sort of looking at every moment and in this, we are a little bit more like responsible for our portion, but then we bring them together and find all of those beautiful things that they have in common.
“This is, Patrick and Shatori are the new grad MFA candidates in directing at the University of Arkansas. And so this is what the university department calls the qualifier. So to me, like the funnest part has been like getting to know them through this process as artists, but also as people, and being able to see their work and being able to like kind of use it as a little bit of an assessment tool of like, oh, okay, this is an opportunity for us to grow this beautiful skill or this is going to be like something that we're going to want to like continue to work on over the course of the next three years together.
“So to me, it's been like the perfect project for giving me pedagogically what I needed. But then artistically, it's been really feeding my soul to be able to just play with other artists in that way.”
Kellams: What should we know about the performances? How to get tickets?
“We go to the university website, uark.edu. And we can click in there and get any of the performances. It's limited seating because it is at Global Campus Theater. It's in the thrust configuration. So quite a few tickets are available though for every performance. So get in there right now and get those seats.”
Kellams: Thrust configuration?
“Yeah. So we have audiences on three sides of the house. So that's also been like a new skill that we've been playing around with, with the staging in that unique configuration.”
Kellams: I was gonna ask, Shatori, what's that like?
“I love it. It's honestly, it's how I started. It's my roots. I've worked more in the round and thrust configuration more than I have on a proscenium stage. So it's been really fun and it's been fun to get with the actors who aren't usually accommodated to a thrust stage and sort of like pick their brains on, you know, like, what does this angle look like? Or what do we look like from this side of the theater?”
Kellams: Yeah. And with a production like "Love/Sick," which is about vulnerability a lot, it seems like a thrust configuration would be a little bit more vulnerable.
“Yeah. I think those black box theaters are so intimate, you get so close to your audience. And so I think that that will add even more to that level of recognition that we're able to see. And the audience will feel so close to the story and so close to our actors.”
Kellams: This is the season opener.
“Season opener. Yeah, yeah. We've got an amazing season at the university this year. We're really, really excited about this one. Following up next is "Lend Me a Soprano," which is a like high farce. Yeah. Which is such a fun thing to play with.
“And then in the spring, we've got "Come From Away," an important musical, and "1984," which couldn't be more important story. Right? Yeah, yeah. So we got some amazing things that the students are going to be working on this year.”
Kellams: Morgan Hicks, Tori Watson and Patrick Campbell are the co-directors of the University of Arkansas season opening production, John Cariani's "Love/Sick." "Love/Sick" will be presented at the Global Campus Black Box Theater on Center Street, just off the Fayetteville square, from Sept. 25 through Oct. 4. Tickets and more information at uark.edu. That's uark.edu. Our conversation recorded at the Carver Center for Public Radio yesterday afternoon.
