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Yale Drama Meets the Psych Ward: Invasive Species
Maia Novi applies humor, and Goop, and also Andrew Lloyd Webber, to her fraught experience as a drama student.
Novi gets stung by the acting bug (embodied by a slithering Sanchez in a literal insect mask; he gives a similar sliminess to Evita ’s British director later on) while watching The Amazing Spider-Man as a kid, which makes her disdain Latin American movies and dream of a career in the U.S. She tries out clown school in France and then lands in New Haven among vapid and cutthroat Americans, their eyes gleaming with dreams of landing agents and turning red from all the coke they do. In white pants and a tank top, she struts around with confidence, whether as a newbie drama student not realizing she’s landed in a big and threatening pond or as a parodical Evita, a performance enhanced by Breslin’s clever Dior-shaped shadow projections on the wall behind her. Of the several parts she plays, Alexandra Maurice is most significant as Akila, a queen bee of the ward (she has some sort of Jell-O monopoly) who befriends Novi and provides a dark, funny speech about an attempted overdose.
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