Caleb Woodley, recent graduate, returns to Iowa State to play the role of the Director in “Six Characters,” Matt Foss‘ adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s original play. Foss’ take on the show is a featured performance in this week’s Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, hosted at Iowa State Center.

Q: What was your reaction to hearing “Six Characters” was invited to perform at the festival?

A: We were invited to the show and it was very exciting to get to work on this show again.

Q: Why were you so excited?

A: I really liked working with this crew and with this director, and it gave you a second shot at the material. We all worked on the show together for seven to eight weeks and then we put it on four times. And then we got nine months away from it. So we all knew the material, we were all experts on the material. So we had nine months to have that information kind of stew. And then we found out December 13 that we were officially going to be putting it back on. Then we had 20 hours of rehearsal and put on a show that originally took us eight weeks of rehearsal and love. It’s kind of like coming home, like a family reunion.

Q: What do you love about the show?

A: It’s really good at exploring collaboration, the making of theatre and what part every person plays in creativity. The entire process of the adaptation of this play was collaborative. It all came from the source of the director, Matt Foss, and he handed it off to us. We got to make more and he would guide us in a direction and someone would come up with this amazing idea and we would push that forward. In the actual show, you can see someone have an impulse and then everyone supports that impulse. It helps push the action of the story forward and it helps bring us closer together. It helps the story mean more because everyone worked so hard together on it.

Q: What is it about Matt Foss that makes him such a good director?

A: He has a very individual vision that he shares ownership with everyone. He can guide without telling. He shares wholly his creativity with you. It’s never just his idea, it’s our idea. Also, he treats everyone like a fellow artist and genius, and makes it so there’s no reason for us not to believe that.