Author: Marjorie Camarda
As students, we have all sat down to start a project that is due in 24 hours, knowing yet another sleepless night lies ahead. Few would describe this experience as “great fun.” However, that is just what the participants of this year’s 24 Hour Theater Challenge said of the single day they were allotted to create four original short plays.
Saturday’s performances in the intimate setting of Sycamore Glen marked the end of the second annual challenge. The previous day, students had been divided into four groups containing a writer, a director and several actors. The only constraints on their creative autonomy were the mandatory theme of “flight,” the required line “How uncomfortable are you?,” the sound effect of children’s laughter, and a restriction to two provided props. The groups then set up shop in Fowler and worked the night away.
Members of Team Magma agreed that the camaraderie that resulted from the project was their greatest reward. “It forces you to work collaboratively with people you don’t necessarily know well […] We made a fort out of blankets and sat in it for 24 hours and wrote a play about Bill Bye,” said director Dan Selon (junior).
Selon’s “Bill Nye’s Flight of Fancy”–an elaborate story about Nye’s plan to destroy America’s children using a volcano under Utah after the cancellation of his science television show–was not the only quirky and undeniably entertaining production. Other performances included “Penguin Pan,” the plight of Gimpy the ‘paraplegic penguin crippled by polio at a very young age’; “Three Little Wenches From School Are We,” a look at the audition of three women for the part of Wench #6 at Medieval Moments; and “Fools in Flight,” the story of three sinners who meet God in the form of a drunken transient at a bus station.
All participants discovered creative uses for the two props they were allowed: a dismantled wooden massage tool and a bundle of red elastics. The former was utilized as a strand of DNA and as Rosary beads; the latter as an amoeba, a souvenir from a penguin’s swim, an “unchastity bow,” and a burning bush. The uses of these props weremet with incessant laughter from the audience.
“It’s mostly intended to be amusing,” said co-producer Emily Harkins (junior). But fellow co-producer Karen Baughn (junior) said the Challenge has also yielded serious works of art that were later expanded. Joel Davis (first-year), who played the role of God in “Fools in Flight,” said he would love to work with the writer if he continued developing the script.
Baughn described the challenge as “a good Fall activity to dissolve perceived walls in the theater department.” The department can sometimes create a competitive atmosphere that can be intimidating, especially for younger students. But the bew bonds becamse evident when the entire group clasped hands for a final bow, proving that Baughn’s objective had been achieved and that the participants had quite possibly just experienced the most fulfilling all-nighter of their college careers.
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