Author: Erik Parker, Torch Staff
Four groups of students presented 24 hours of intense theatrical planning and collaboration on September 22. These students participated in the 24-Hour Theatre Challenge, an event where each group had from 6 p.m. on September 21 to 6 p.m. on September 22 to write and practice a 10-minute play.Each group had a writer, director and actors. The plays were entirely new and original-the only guidelines were that the plays had to include a Styrofoam container and ponchos as props and the line “I feel like we’re witches.”
The plays were performed at Sycamore Glen and Fowler 112 (after rain interrupted the second play) in front of an audience of approximately 30 students.
The first play featured a woman writing a biography of Jodie Foster who thought up ways that Jodie Foster could die after her phone calls were not returned.
In the second, an investigator quizzed a witness about two high-school girls who were found dead in the bathroom at their prom. The third play involved the funeral of a man named Donalds whose wife and daughter took part in bizarre rituals to the disturbance of a worried acquaintance.
The final play was done telenovela style, featuring a woman on an airplane who meets a psychic that spoke to the woman’s dead dog with the help of a dramatic air-hostess.Karen Baughn (senior), the chief organizer of the 24-Hour Theatre Challenge, was thrilled about the outcome of the event. “Everyone did really, really well,” she said.
She said anyone could participate in the Challenge, and that only about half of the participants were theater majors. This is actually why Baughn started the event three years ago. “It’s something for people who are not super meshed in the theater crowd,” she said.
Baughn also said the Challenge has evolved over the course of its existence. This time around, “the students were very organized,” she said. Groups organized shifts so that everyone would have time to eat and sleep.
Ian Lam (first-year), the director of the play that featured Donalds’ funeral, found the experience to be exciting. “You form good friendships,” he said. “It involves meeting a group of people you don’t know 24 hours beforehand.”
Lam also spoke of the process of “building something up from nothing” through “working together as a group.” He said his group started by throwing out ideas that the writer would then synthesize into a script. Next, the actors read, interpreted and practiced the script. As the director, he would then shape the piece as a whole to make the play into a good story.”It’s all about different pieces of art coming into being,” Lam said.
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