As February draws to a close, a new epoch approaches: thesis season. Next month, theatre students Sari Klainberg ’25 and Stella Oh ’25 will present their thesis productions. These two projects have been in progress the full year, with official rehearsals beginning Feb. 5 and the seniors contributing research and workshopping throughout the process. The two seniors will present their thesis productions in the ’62 Center Directing Studio. Klainberg will direct Falsettoland, with music and lyrics by William Finn ’74, and Oh will star in her original Even Monkeys Fall From Trees!, a one-woman show directed by Leo Wang ’27. The shows will both be performed on March 7 and 8 at 7:30 p.m.

Falsettoland is the third section of the The Marvin Trilogy, often combined with the second section, March of the Falsettos, as the two-act musical Falsettos. The show follows Marvin (Dash Alschuler-Pierce ’28) and his ex-wife Trina (Shoshie Hemley ’25) as they prepare for their son’s bar mitzvah. When their former lovers appear, their personal lives become ever more chaotic.

Though originally written and performed in 1991 and set in the ’80s, the show’s themes of identity, love, and grief still resonate today. “It’s a deeply sensitive and empathetic show, and that doesn’t go out of style,” Alschuler-Pierce said. 

Klainberg agreed, citing engendering empathy among audience members as one of her main goals. “This is a show about building a community and a found family,” she said. “All of the characters start this act of the show with loose connections, [but] they end together. I really wanted to track the throughline of how these connections form when everyone’s on stage for the entirety of the piece.” 

In assembling her cast, Klainberg was open to new and old faces — the show contains a mix of students she had collaborated with previously and fresh talent. However, the group runs senior-heavy, with five students graduating this year. “It’s really special because this is the last show at Williams for four of the people on this project: three actors, [and] my costume designer,” Klainberg said. “We all met in our first semester on Mamma Mia, so this feels very beautiful and closed-circle.” 

Both friendship and rehearsals have moved beyond the ’62 Center. Once, Klainberg took two actors who share a racquetball scene in the show on a field trip to the squash courts to practice playing a similar sport. “We got a lot of looks from the actual squash players in the gym,” she said. “But it felt like a moment of adventure.” 

Despite being one-woman show, Oh’s Even Monkeys Fall From Trees! involved collaboration, as she worked with Wang and stage manager Lio Otter ’26.5 to bring her own text to life. “As we rehearsed, we found a lot of discoveries and deeper understandings that then informed the vision of design and dramaturgy,” she said.

According to Oh, her play — a story about a young woman grappling with her Korean American identity, as she navigates her complex relationship with her mother — is inspired by many of her personal experiences. “[During the writing process,] I started off generating content, and all of that content basically came from myself,” Oh said. “It would be from journal entries I had written in the past or content in response to art exhibitions. I also wrote some short stories and inner monologues taken from my experiences in Korea and with my mom.” 

Utilizing both English and Korean to communicate the life journey of Oh’s character, the show explores themes of the Asian diaspora, immigrant experiences, and generational trauma. “I think what really pushed me to write my own story was when Sarah [Shin, my mentor] sat me down and [said], ‘Just write what you want to see. Tell the story that you wish you could’ve seen when you were younger,’” Oh said. 

As a first time playwright, Oh embraced adventure from the outset, seeking to challenge herself as an artist. “It’s still a really huge step and it’s scary and it’s nerve wracking, but that’s what theatre is about,” she said. “What kind of theatre would there be if you didn’t take those challenging steps?”

According to Oh, the final version of her show was the product of over 20 drafts. In the future, Oh envisions exploring additional iterations of her work. “I definitely have so many drafts that could go in crazy directions,” she said. “Postgrad, it would be nice if I could do a reading or a workshop for some iteration of this show to a different audience.”