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Two students are forcibly pulled away from each other by two other cast members in an opening sequence marked by lights flashing back and forth. Onstage, Priyanka Oomman, dressed in a hospital gown, takes a sharp breath.

“It’s a brave piece of work,” said Isa Mooney, Syracuse University senior and the show’s director. “And it’s also funny, there are such gray areas.”

“The Effect,” Black Box Players’ latest production, opens Friday in Schine Underground from Dec. 5-7. The show follows Tristan and Connie, two participants in an experimental antidepressant drug trial. When Tristan and Connie fall in love during the trial, the doctors wonder whether the increased dopamine or true love brought them together.

Sophomore Lisa Ryu, who plays Dr. James, said “The Effect” opens up conversations about mental health and love.

“You really get to question whether it’s just the physical chemical reaction or something beyond,” Ryu said.

Hawkins Meek, a sophomore who plays Tristan, said the show explores a “powerful story” of drug usage, which can be valuable to college students. With exposure to drugs on college campuses across the country, it’s important for college students to understand how to be safe, he said.

Black Box Players chooses shows specifically tailored to a collegiate audience, Weller Dorff, the program’s artistic director, said. With “The Effect,” Dorff said they want to speak directly to members of the Syracuse community about love, especially for those who have trouble with it. He said he thinks the play would make for a perfect first date night.

“Watching a story that is about finding love and choosing love and discovering love when you don’t think that it previously existed is really beautiful and really important,” Dorff said.

Mooney said she was drawn to the “human narrative” of the play’s characters, who aren’t all good or bad. The script is complex; Mooney said her artistic interpretation came through in the choreography. The choreography in the play is fluid and dynamic, with characters moving together in synchronized motion.

“It explores repetitive gesture and their bodies are guided by obstructive, unseen forces,” Mooney said. “It sets the tone of the characters are entering a system where their autonomy is constantly negotiated.”

“The Effect” opens with two students being forcibly pulled away from each other by two other cast members. The show opens Friday in Schine Underground from Dec. 5-7. Dana Kim | Staff Photographer

This production was Mooney’s directorial debut. She said it felt “really important” since directing is a generally male-dominated field. Being in the role made her empowered to make creative decisions, she said.

Many directors have presented “The Effect” as a “bleak science fiction thriller,” Dorff said. Conversely, Mooney’s interpretation of the work brings out the romantic, complicated relationship between the main characters as well as the comedy within the piece, he said.

As a psychology minor, Ryu said she appreciates the show’s psychological aspects. However, Ryu said the play also reminds audiences to think about love. Whether the main characters are truly in love or not is up to interpretation.

“It’s really all about what you choose,” Ryu said. “In that way, what Connie and Tristan experience throughout their journey gives them an answer to this question.”

As the actors move across the stage and perform, text projected behind them marks the phases of the experiment. Audio effects transition between scenes of the show as characters interact with the drug and each other.

Mooney and Dorff both said they hope the Syracuse community will take away important lessons about love through the play.

“When I say to my actors a lot in rehearsal is a note that I’ve given them to lean into the stakes of falling in love and falling out of love and how life changing that is,” Mooney said.

Published on December 3, 2025 at 11:18 pm