Doane University students perform, produce 'The Delays' this week

Jax Stander’s love for directing stemmed from Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy tabletop role-playing game.

“The problem is, with Dungeon & Dragons, is that your players are the ones making the story, and it’s not you,” Stander said. “But if you are the director of a play, you have the ability to force perspective and really tell the story and make it shine bright.”

Stander, a junior theater major at Doane University, is directing the play The Delays that is showing at Doane this week.

The play is set on New Year’s Eve in three different years, starting in an airport. It explores the delays in characters’ lives due to the choices they made over time.

Shandi Anderson, a theatre assistant professor of practice at Doane, said this is the first year that faculty are mentoring students as they run the production.

“From director to all of the designers, the props person and the whole cast, it's all students,” Anderson said. “We've just been guiding them through this process while they create something together.”

Anderson is friends with the playwright and was in the first audience to see the show in 2018. She said she has students in her Intro to Theater class read the play every year.

“It's one of my favorite shows that I've ever seen,” Anderson said.

Stander said he’s learned the importance of patience and flexibility throughout the seven weeks the students have worked on the show. He’s also seen the cast and designers learning throughout the experience.

“There’s been a lot of growth so far in how they figured out that the original way they were going to do something was the student way to do it, where we’re allowed to stumble and fall,” he said. “They quickly realized that they have to keep their footing, and they have kept their footing.”

Stander said people should come see the show for the story it tells and to support the hard work the students put into it.

“The most important thing that we have is that this is our craft,” Stander said. “We are passionate about what we do and to share that with people means the world to us, and that’s how we create those connections.”

The Delays runs Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night at 7:30 p.m.