On Saturday, March 14, the Villanova Theatre’s Graduate Program presented its annual Student Studio Show in the Smith Performance Lab. Tucked in the back corner of the Mullen Center, the Performance Lab is a much more intimate and experimental space than the main stage of Topper Theatre. It was the perfect setting for the unique challenge these students set for themselves. Theatre graduate student and the show’s producer, Susan Betten, opened with a few remarks on how she had pitched this idea so that students in the program could spend time together and make art.
“I’ve done this sort of festival at my undergrad [three times],” Betten explained. “So I had a schedule that I felt I had improved over time. So, I took that schedule, and I modified it for what we can do at Villanova.”
This schedule was a rather intensive 24-hour period that began promptly at 8:30 p.m. the night before. On Friday, March 13, auditions were held. Each performer prepared a one or two-minute piece with creative freedom over its contents. The audition drew students from within the graduate program, but some undergrads decided to take on this challenge as well. The goal of each audition was to showcase personality and creativity. After watching each entry, the three playwright-director duos, selected by Betten through a previous application process, cast four actors and drew a random setting and prop out of a hat. With the bare bones of a production set in motion, everyone left for the night. The work for the playwrights was not over, though, as they stayed up writing their plays all night. The entire group reconvened Saturday at 8 a.m. to begin working. There was an initial table read with the entire cast, after which the playwrights were sent to retire and get their well-earned rest. Then, it was up to the directors and the actors to memorize lines, stage the action and get in character. Saturday, 8:30 p.m. marked exactly 24 hours since the endeavor had begun, and the actors were ready to take to the stage.
The first of the three 20-minute plays to be showcased during the festival was entitled “Super Smash Beaux.” The playwright, John Morrison, received the required setting of the Super Smash Bro’s Map and the prop Milky White the Cow. The play took place during a battle set in the world of this beloved video game. Luigi, played by Miles Noecker, is trying to get over his breakup with Princess Daisy and sets his sights on Princess Rosalina, played by Julia Amendola, despite her disdain for the efforts of the men in the skit to protect her. This play was incredibly ridiculous and truly captured the spirit of this festival. While the actors still needed to reference their lines throughout the play, they made up for any awkward pauses with hilarious character choices.
The second play, “Pluck,” was written by Kristin Kijanka who was tasked with setting the play in a theatre and including a musical instrument as a prop. Each actor played just one character, “Pluck.” Two ghosthunters stay overnight at an old theatre that is rumored to be haunted by a former owner as revenge on her unfaithful lover. As they set up and record hilarious clips for their video, the pair meet “Lydia,” played by Caroline Heins, who they assume is a local who heard about the sleepover and wanted to join. It is pretty obvious to the audience from the beginning that Lydia is actually Cordelia, the woman who haunts the theatre, and much of the humor comes from that knowledge gap. As night falls, the ghosthunters fall asleep, and Cordelia sheds her black mourning clothes for a colorful stage costume before exiting, the harp the manager brought out to “encourage paranormal activity” in hand.
The final play was entitled “Space Jam (Not the Movie… Kinda)” by Justin Badoyen. Given the required setting of Space, and the required prop of a microphone, Badoyen created a witty, silly and perfectly timed script following a crew of humans attempting to make contact with the source of a “curious” sound. That source, of course, turned out to be basketball-playing aliens, and their unlikely misfit, played by standout actor David Walker, who played seven roles throughout the 20-minute show, must face off against these aliens in the final minutes of a game. The audience quite literally could not stop laughing through the final moments of this production.
“I feel really happy, and I feel really grateful, and I feel very tender-hearted,” Betten said at the end of the festival. “I hope everyone was able to take away how fleeting theater can be and how lovely it is to take a moment together to create something that is ridiculous and exciting and that we can all share.”
The festival ended with a standing ovation and many very happy actors. They danced onto the stage all together to take their final bow.
