The Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Theater & Music Theater at Princeton University will present Not Your Buddy, a new play written and co-directed by Princeton senior Chloe Satenberg. Performances are on Ocotober 6 and 7 at 8:00 p.m. and October 8 at 2:00 p.m. in the Wallace Theater at the Lewis Arts complex on the Princeton campus. The show is free and open to the public; advance tickets are encouraged through University Ticketing. The Wallace Theater is wheelchair accessible and an assistive listening system is available. The October 8 performance will be open-captioned. Guests in need of other access accommodations are asked to contact the Lewis Center at LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week prior to the event date.
Not Your Buddy follows four female counselors at a Jewish summer camp as they navigate their friendships and confront their history during the interstitial time between high school and college. Via monologues and dreamscapes, the play immerses audiences in the tormented mental state of protagonist Buddy—a 17-year-old counselor undergoing a crisis of identity. The play explores themes of Judaism, queerness, the mother-daughter relationship, and how a young woman finds her path among the challenges of growing into adulthood. The production is co-directed by Princeton School of Architecture graduate student Daniel Landez.
Caitlin Durkin as Buddy in rehearsal for Not Your Buddy, a new play by Princeton senior Chloe Satenberg. Photo courtesy of Chloe Satenberg
Plagued by the question, “What are you planing to do after you graduate?” Satenberg conceived the character Buddy, an aimless teenage girl who feels pathetic compared to her college-driven peers. Buddy’s world was inspired by Satenberg’s own experience attending Jewish summer camp in California. In Not Your Buddy, she explores the essential relationship between vulnerability and self-actualization.
Chloe Satenberg is pursuing a degree in English and a certificate in theater; the play represents her senior independent work in both areas. She began work on the play during the spring 2023 semester in a playwriting class with faculty member and award-winning playwright Nathan Alan Davis. In the Program in Theater, Satenberg has performed in the plays Feminine Products, The Thanksgiving Play, and The Silk Filter; she also served as projection designer for the new play Mine in its Lewis Center run and accompanied the production to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2023. Her coursework has been comprised of playwriting classes, directing classes, and cross-listed courses in the English Department and Program in Theater. At Princeton, she has served as both the artistic director and executive director of Fuzzy Dice Improv Comedy, as well as the head poetry editor of the Nassau Literary Review.
Daniel Landez, co-director and projection designer for the production, is currently pursuing his professional Master of Architecture at Princeton with a certificate in Media and Modernity. Landez is a spatial designer whose transmedia work hybridizes architecture, performance, queer of color critique, chicano studies, urban studies, and art. His work seeks to propose queer and decolonizing architecture methods using projection, archiving, and performance. This June, Landez was invited to present his research formally analyzing La Danza de Los Voladores at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. Landez received his B.S. in Architecture and Theater Arts from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2021, where he was awarded the William Emerson Prize, Joseph D. Everingham Award, and Edward S. Darna Award, as well as being invited to the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
Not Your Buddy features student actors Caitlin Durkin, Sabina Jafri, Jessica Lopez, Cecile McWilliams, Tanaka Ngwara, Gillian Tisdale, and Tyler Wilson. The student production team includes lighting designer Alex Slisher, props designer Molly Lopkin, stage manager Lev Ricanati, and assistant stage manager Roya Reese. Faculty advisors include Elena Araoz, Nathan Alan Davis, and Tess James.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn more about this event, the Program in Theater & Music Theater, and the more than 100 performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, and lectures presented each year at the Lewis Center, most of them free.
