Local Artist Feature: Kate Franklin

Kate Franklin’s new work “Rules of Play” uses games to talk about rape culture

The Local Artists series features artists, activists, and change-makers within the Northeastern community. Exploring the journeys and recent projects of these talented students, faculty, and alumni, each article shines the spotlight on one artist and allows readers to look no further than our university for sources of inspiration.

By Anita Goharfar, Lifestyle Columnist

Photo Credits of Play Videographers, Alexis Mendelsohn and Artie Ghosh

Featuring Kate Franklin

It is more than a social scene; it is a social obligation made up of tube tops, red solo cups, and the Greek alphabet. The college frat party is a right of passage, especially for freshmen girls. This cycle of dress, drink, dance, repeat is a dangerous one, where the benign structure of Greek life sets the scene for sexual assault on a stage influenced by popularity and pressure.

Theater major, actor, and director Kate Franklin grew up immersed in theater — from acting and singing in her hometown of Philadelphia to writing and directing as a theater major at Northeastern. In her upcoming show Rules of Play, Franklin tackles the patriarchal system of Greek life on college campuses using a comedic, exaggerated approach that reveals the game show-like reality of “a night out in college 101.”

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Goharfar: Can you give us a synopsis of Rules of Play?

Franklin: It is a dark comedy, it’s non-realistic, and it takes you through the steps of getting ready to go out to a fraternity party, so everything from picking a bodysuit to pregaming. This whole play is set through the lense of the game. Act I is more like a candyland, colorful, a little more rudimentary game, and Act 2 is based more upon a game show that is a step-by-step guide of a hookup and what leads to be a sexual assault. The main character is a freshman girl who is being taught all of these things as a novice, and ultimately the game is impossible for her to win.

Featuring a scene from Rules of Play

G: What was the motivation behind writing this play?

F: At my previous university, I was very immersed in hookup culture, Greek life culture, and party culture. I was just kind of accepting everything that was happening — kind of leaving my goggles on — and I was sexually assaulted. After taking space, time, and therapy, I’ve been doing research trying to figure out how these statistics are the way that they are with little interference from universities, parents, administrations. Everybody is complacent in letting rape culture manifest.

I took a playwriting class my second year, so I had this idea of making the rules of going out to a fraternity party set in candyland. Personally, I draw a lot of inspiration from Big Mouth. For my senior capstone project, I wrote a thesis paper examining why the current plays on the subject fail to address the issues and change the culture. Many of the plays — and there's not many of them — focus on the trial or who is telling the truth, which reinforces victim blaming ideology. Having a protagonist and an antagonist doesn’t paint the whole picture; what that tells the audience is “I can be completely off the hook, I’m not a part of this.”

G: Sexual assault is a dark, somber topic. Yet you describe your play as “comedic and feminist.” How do you go about addressing a serious issue with this perspective?

F: I argued in my paper that a play needed to be written using Brechtian methodology — a play that in some way provides emotional distance between audience and character so that the audience can have a more practical response and be propelled into political and social action. I knew that I didn’t want to have overt violence. It’s not really necessary and it also can isolate your survivor audience when showing a sexual audience. In a lot of classic musicals, there’s a dream sequence plot into a narrative that is completely separate from everything else. Singing in the Rain has this; Oklahoma has this. I thought to have the assault in this play be a dream-like dance that is in a completely different world. 

Featuring a scene from Rules of Play

G: The pandemic has changed the ways in which performances can happen. You found a unique way to go about the constriction of touch. How did you go about this?

F: Producing a play during COVID was definitely the challenge, especially when it requires physical contact. Luckily, the theater community is pretty large and people are willing to participate since this was completely student done. I had to figure out if I wanted to have this be filmed as a theatrical filmed piece or if I wanted to do it over Zoom. One game in Act 2, there’s a huge exercise ball hanging from the ceiling and the players have to find the clitoris. That’s one mini-game I could not conceptualize doing over Zoom.

Another challenge is that there are a few moments of critical touch. In the steps of the hookup, there're mini-games that are not realistic, but all of the sudden you see this cohesive act. How do we do that when the actors must be socially distanced? In overcoming that, we established that the female players were wearing pink gloves and male players were wearing blue gloves. In close ups, we would have the actors switch colored gloves so that they were touching their own bodies but it would seem like it’s the other person.

G: As we’ve seen in the past few years, activists and artists like you are shining a light on systems that allow for assault and objectification, especially in entertainment and theater. However, talking about sexual violence is still stigmatized. How do you feel about addressing such a controversial topic in today’s social climate? 

Featuring a scene from Rules of Play

F: Part of the form of this play is to combat some of that. Using humor is a way to let people in, because our culture has a hard time talking about sex, let alone sexual violence. This play is funny until it is not funny at all. As an audience member, you can relax a little bit and then it turns it around at the very end, and is like “So, what are you going to do?”

G: “Rules of Play” will be screening November 16-22 and is accompanied by a few post-performance discussions. Tell me more about the decision to create a space for dialogue.

Featuring a scene from Rules of Play

F: I'm having various post-performance conversations, one meant for survivors, one for advocacy, and one just general. Using a play as a lense allows people to have some distance, but still be able to understand it. In a social context, a traditional talk back doesn’t do anything for the topic. I think about my great aunt who is going to come to this, who probably has no idea about the details of this world at all. Systems of oppression and abuse thrive in the dark; hookup culture feels very ambiguous. I want the takeaway to be that the system is what is bad and all of us are actors within the system and hold some responsibility for the problem. My greatest hope is to talk and think as a group on what can be done to repair the damage and prevent further damage down the line.

G: What is the message you have for Northeastern students specifically?

F: I knew in my play, it was important to not have the takeaway be ‘all straight white men suck.’ I’m a believer that in order to change, we need everyone on board and to change a patriarchal system, you need to work within the patriarchy and with the oppressors in a way to access power. Hookup culture, as it is, in some ways benefits me, in other ways benefits no one. For survivors, my message is “I see you, I hear you, I am with you, and you are fucking resilient.” My message to everyone else is to come with your defenses down, be open to learning, and be empowered to change.

To learn more about “Rules of Play” and sign up to watch, check out @katefranklin_ and her show  @rules_of_play on Instagram and at rulesofplayca.wixsite.com/2020.

Featuring a scene from Rules of Play

Featuring a scene from Rules of Play