Student playwrights will be showcasing their talents for the eighth consecutive year this Saturday at the Ten-Minute Play Festival, also known as All Night Theatre.
“All Night Theatre, it’s random, chaotic and rushed but an amazing experience everyone enjoys,” said senior musical theater major Rachel Street. “Everyone should come and see the performances and be amazed at what people can do in 24 hours.”
The event was created eight years ago when a group of students wanted a chance to showcase their own work and perform plays they had written themselves.
The Festival, though a theater department activity, is completely student-run by a triumvirate of theater students and is sponsored by Theta Alpha Phi, a national honorary theater fraternity.
“That’s one of the most important things about it,” said Katie Willhite, a junior Christian studies and theater double major. “It’s student-run from every aspect.”
Each triumvirate is made up of a senior, a junior and a sophomore. When the senior member graduates the remaining two pick a new sophomore so there are always two students who have participated before.
This year the triumvirate is made up of Street, Willhite and sophomore theater major Rudy Jones.
The process of putting on the festival is labor-intensive for all involved.
“[There’s] a lot of behind-the-scenes work no one sees,” Street said. “There are a lot of deadlines: we have to get scripts, get a panel together to judge the scripts, find directors, find fund-raising, pick directors, audition everyone, cast the show and finally run the show.”
The directors for this year’s festival also went through an application process, all of the plays are student-written and any student is welcome to submit a play.
Plays were submitted to a five-member anonymous faculty panel that ranked them on a scale. The triumvirate then takes the ranked play submissions and picks the top five to seven for performance.
The actors are chosen through an audition process and any student, regardless of major, can audition.
Tonight from 4:30-7:30 p.m. students wanting to participate can show up and audition in Verser. The audition will consist of reading from some of the selected plays.
“It’s really neat to see students from all over campus, not just theater, [working on] our craft,” Willhite said.
Post-auditions, the triumvirate will cast all the plays and on Friday the names will be posted.
Friday night, at 7:30 p.m., the work begins. The students will meet in Verser and practice their plays until the directors feel they have it right. Twenty-four hours later, on Saturday night at 7:30 p.m., the plays are performed in Verser Theatre.
“It [the festival] was my first chance to perform at Ouachita,” Willhite said. Willhite also said it is great to watch other students “get that chance to perform [in the festival].”
Street echoed Willhite’s statement.
“It’s such an awesome opportunity to see non-theater people strut their acting stuff,” Street said.
The directors received the plays this afternoon, giving them an extra 24 hours to learn the scripts before beginning to work with their play’s actors.
This year the Festival will branch out by adding a silent auction portion as a fund-raiser for Theta Alpha Phi.
“Basically it’s a silent auction with donations from the community, faculty and students,” Street said. “It’s to raise money for our theater fraternity Theta Alpha Phi. There should be some crazy things auctioned off, so everyone should come and see.”
Willhite said one prize is a new TV.
Despite the amount of work that it takes to be a member of the triumvirate, both Street and Willhite enjoy their roles.
“I love being a member of the triumvirate and seeing exactly how everything magically falls in place,” Street said. “It’s a lot of work, but I have an amazing team this year that I couldn’t do without.”
Willhite agrees with Street, saying, “My favorite part is probably the casting of the shows and seeing the final product. [It’s] really rewarding.”
By Ananda Boardman, Signal Writer
