Fresh off a plane from their final performance of “Mary Stuart” in Arezzo, Italy, Anna Fearheiley and Emily Jackson were satisfied.

“If we ever do this again,” Jackson said, “Let’s do it just like that.”

The two women are home in their native environment at the OU School of Drama after a 10-day tour in Arona, Italy. The two drama seniors performed “Mary Stuart” by playwright Dacia Maraini in a six-day theater festival located on a lake in Arona.

Jackson and Fearheiley performed two shows while in Italy, one at the International Festival delle due Rocche in Arona and one on OU’s sister campus in Arezzo for OU students studying abroad.

The town of Arona in northern Italy hosts many art and music festivals every year, but the community was craving this festival and eager to attend a theater festival, Fearheiley said.

“One of the things that was coolest for me was to see this little town in Italy starving for this kind of art and they were so appreciative that they were there,” Fearheiley said. “When we put on plays here, we think ‘this is what we do’ and the people of Arona were so happy for something that they don’t always have access to.”

Maraini, the play’s author and creative director for the first Festival delle due Rocche, asked Fearheiley and Jackson to perform her play in the festival in March after the play’s performance at OU.

The OU School of Drama and World Literature Today Magazine held the event in Maraini’s honor and asked the two students to perform.

Jackson said she and Fearheiley had to read, rehearse and direct the play in two weeks in order to prepare for Maraini’s visit.

The play tells the story of Queen Elizabeth I and Queen of Scots Mary Stuart, leading up to Stuart’s execution. Fearheiley played the role of Mary Stuart as well as the role of Elizabeth’s maid,Nanny, and Jackson took on the roles of Elizabeth and Stuart’s maid, Kennedy.

“This is really a performance piece as well as being a narrative, but it is really out of time,” Jackson said. “Its not very chronological and sometimes the characters are speaking to people who aren’t there. The play is a fairly heavy commentary on the lives of women and the role women play and the power that men try to weald over them.”

Jackson said the play’s audience can become overwhelmed with the amount of history in the first act, but the second act explores the women, and the audience can understand the meaning of the play because they understand the women and their dilemma.

In addition to Maraini’s play, a Senegalese African drumming troupe and many movement- and performance-based groups performed at the festival.

Both Jackson and Fearheiley will be involved in the Lab Theatre’s production of William Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona” later this fall and will graduate in May. Fearheiley said her experience in Italy has shown her that theater is everywhere.

“One of the things I learned from this, both personally and professionally, is that theater is happening everywhere, it’s happening in Norman, Oklahoma; it’s happening in a little town in Italy,” Fearheiley said.

“Its both encouraging and overwhelming to think about that. As seniors we don’t know where we should go, but the thing is, we could go anywhere, but which anywhere is the best anywhere?”