College Park’s Yellow Wallpaper Turns Isolation Into Dread
A mother separated from her daughter sees someone behind the wallpaper. College Park’s cast makes her fear hard to shake.*
Fine Arts | Theater Review
Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2026
THE WOODLANDS, Texas — College Park High School Theatre opens Yellow Wallpaper on Wednesday, Sept. 23, with an unsettling story of a new mother whose world grows smaller and more frightening. At Monday’s final dress rehearsal, the cast and crew made that fear visible and audible.
Jane is suffering from depression after the birth of her daughter. Separated from her baby, she is taken by her husband, John, to an isolated house in the country. One room in particular begins to disturb her. She believes she can see a woman moving behind its sickly yellow wallpaper. The more Jane looks, the less the room feels like a place where she can recover.
Adapted by Kathryn Funkhouser from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story and directed by Katja Rivera Yanko, the one-act play moves between two time periods. The figures in the wallpaper give Jane’s fears a physical presence onstage. The play does not name postpartum psychosis, and this review does not assign Jane that diagnosis. Still, her distress and the way it is dismissed can feel as though they were drawn from today’s headlines about maternal mental health. Yanko said she chose the production last school year; its present-day resonance struck her only after rehearsals began.
Josephina Green’s performance as Jane gives the story its emotional center and much of its dread. She does not turn Jane’s decline into one sudden transformation. As the isolation deepens and the room takes hold of her attention, the change registers in Green’s posture and expression as well as her voice. The audience can see her struggle developing scene by scene. Speaking after Monday’s dress rehearsal, Green said she wanted the audience to see Jane’s joy and determination as well as her frustration, anger and sadness. She aimed to keep the character’s inner spark visible even as the people around her chipped away at it. That balance makes Jane’s situation more disturbing: the pe
rson she was at the start is still there, fighting to be heard.
The junior has been acting since first grade. She began in children’s community theater, later performed in school productions and has now spent more than a decade onstage. The length of Jane’s role might make memorization look daunting, but Green described that part of the work as a strength. “Memorizing comes pretty natural to me,” she said after the rehearsal. She needs to review her lines only a few times, she said, and speaking them aloud while practicing the blocking helps them stick. What takes more thought is staying present in each moment and following what Jane wants and feels.
Carolina del Val, playing Eleanor, again shows her range and control. She makes thoughtful use of a role that gives her less room than her abilities deserve. Her work here leaves this reviewer looking forward to seeing her carry a more substantial part in a future College Park production.
As Jenny, class of 2028 student actress Juliet Loftis is a standout. She finds the sharp edge in her lines without rushing them, and her command of timing gives even brief exchanges weight. Her Jenny can make a scene tense with a few well-placed words. The character’s cruelty adds to the danger Jane faces, and Loftis commits to it completely. She makes the role convincing enough t
hat it becomes easy to forget a high school student is onstage. She comes close to stealing the show.
Brea Otieno brings the same depth to Dorothy. She makes the character feel lived in rather than performed from the outside, with choices that feel instinctive rather than calculated. I still remember Otieno as the wonderfully creepy cheerleader in College Park’s 2024 production of Eurydice — one of those smaller performances that somehow stays with you long after the curtain closes. Watching her here, in a very different role, is another reminder of her ability to fully inhabit a character and pull the audience into that character’s world.
The performers credited as the Women in the Wall deserve attention as a group. Their coordinated movement makes the wall seem like one living presence rather than a collection of separate performers. They give shape to the figure Jane believes she sees behind the paper, making the room itself a source of unease. It is one of the production’s strongest and most distu
rbing visual choices.
Sound deepens that unease. Technical director Chris Beineman said Yanko had a specific vision for the production’s sound, which the technical team converted and loaded into its playback system. The cues must follow the action and the lighting as the play’s two time periods begin to blend. A cue arriving a moment late could weaken the connection between Jane, the wall and those shifts in time. Bella Blanco is credited in the program as sound designer.
Beineman put freshman Penny Schellberg at the sound controls for her first show. She had been attending after-school technical sessions and had expressed interest in joining the crew, he said. With several experienced students having graduated, this production gave a newcomer a demanding assignment. “There’s a lot going on there, and she really picked it up well,” Beineman said. At Monday’s dress rehearsal, Penny delivered the cues with precision, allowing the sound to heighten the unease without drawing attention away from the stage.
The production’s darkness goes beyond the possibility of a woman in the wall. Jane has been separated from her daughter, taken far from home and left with a fear that those around her cannot see. College Park’s students let the audience see it, while keeping Jane herself at the center of the story.
Performances and tickets: Wednesday through Saturday, Sept. 23–26, at 7 p.m. in the College Park High School Black Box Theatre, 3701 College Park Drive, The Woodlands. The production program lists online tickets at $8 for general admission and $6 for students; day-of-show admission is $10, cash only.
Purchase online through the College Park Theatre ticket page.
The production has no intermission.
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