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By Sophia Whang

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

No one suspected that playing an heiress or a devil would be so rewarding.

To a group of UCLA students, the production of Christian Dietrich Grabbe’s “Jest, Satire, Irony, and Deeper Meaning,” is giving them the experience they’ve always wanted. As one of the activities designed by a faculty in residence, English professor Frederick Burwick, the UCLA Office of Residential Life and the Hedrick Hall Residents Association allows students to become directors, designers and actors in a production they are calling their own.

Having adapted the original play into a musical, students were put to the test in cooperation, management and creativity – talents that they will exhibit in the performances this weekend.

“We tweaked a bunch of things, added extra lines for characters and added twists, it makes it a lot more fun,” said Emily Rolph, director of “Jest” and second-year ethnomusicology student. “I like to think that we added some improvements to it. And everyone in the cast took on their own character and really made it their own.”

Burwick approached Rolph about the daunting position of director after seeing her work as the music coordinator of “Parachute Kid,” a musical put together last year by the Chinese Student Association. Now she has the opportunity to not only arrange music, but oversee an entire production.

“I think it’s a really good experience, especially for those students who are not in the theater department and may not get the chance to normally perform,” Rolph said.

While Rolph took on the role of director, Ai Yokoyama became a costume designer, sometimes sewing original creations, and Jen Kwock-Lau became a music director, jazzing up the music taken from an opera by Carl Maria von Weber.

“Helping out with the songs was very challenging ’cause we had to adapt it from the opera,” said Kwock-Lau, a fourth-year economics student. “So organizing the music and teaching the singers the songs was my job here.”

“It’s been a really great learning experience. Everyone is so talented, it’s amazing,” Kwock-Lau added.

Burwick, who acts as the dramaturge and adviser to “Jest,” chose this particular play because of its relevance to college life.

The playwright, who was recently recognized in a bicenntenial celebration of his birth, wrote “Jest” when he was a 21-year-old student at the University of Berlin; he included jokes about the university and its students. The Weber opera was also chosen specifically because it was written at the same time and place as the play, and because Grabbe included jokes about the opera in “Jest.”

This is Burwick’s fifth year putting on a production with ORL but his first musical. He thinks the music adds a certain dazzle and that the new twists and surprising perversions bring even more humor to the play.

“The Office of Residential Life has funding to support the creative arts and we have the opportunity here to draw on a lot of the talent among our residence,” Burwick said.

THEATER: “Jest, Satire, Irony, and Deeper Meaning,” will play at the UCLA Northwest Campus Auditorium tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. There will also be a performance at the Balch Auditorium, Scripps College, Claremont, on March 7 at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.