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May 09, 2006
Thespians show off talents at Theater Fest 2006
What do you get when you cross 13 actors, no sleep, and two cases of Red Bull? The result was Hamline’s third annual 24 hour theater production, Pricilla and The Pirate.
Last Wednesday, 13 theater students got together at 5:30 p.m. for a creative journey. The students had 24 hours to write, rehearse and produce a two-act play. Once the 24 hours was up, they had an eager audience packed into Drew 67 waiting to see what they had come up with.
As if being deprived of adequate time to put together a theatrical production wasn’t enough of a challenge, the 13 cast members were also deprived of sleep. Having spent the entire night constructing a play, many were going on more than 36 hours without sleep.
There were some guidelines the students’ play had to abide by. One was that they had to incorporate a line from all three of Hamline’s past productions this year into Pricilla and The Pirate. They also had to use an interesting lighting or media element, as well as a musical element. Finally, they had to use a prop drawn randomly out of a hat.
The text for Pricilla and The Pirate was generated by the students taking turns telling and adding on to a story that began simply as “Once upon a time...”
The general consensus of the cast as to what the most challenging aspect of the entire production was not sleeping. However, they attribute much of the play’s humor to the mentality that prevails in early morning hours.
The lack of sleep didn’t hinder the actors’ ability to perform, either.
When talking about being so tired, Katie Mayer, who played Pricilla, said, “There’s so much adrenaline, you don’t really notice.”
“A Red Bull cures just about anything,” said C.J. Johnson, who played Captain Wallace.
Pricilla and The Pirate was part of Hamline’s 15th annual Theater Festival, presented by Alpha Psi Omega and Hamline University Theater. It is a three-day celebration featuring over a dozen student-run productions including short films, plays, and one-person shows, most of which are written by the students themselves.
Posted by dwright at May 9, 2006 01:59 PM
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