Three wildly different student-directed plays are set to entertain audiences in the upcoming One-Act plays.
“Reunions,” written by Billy Aronson and directed by Lorne Stevenson, 20, theater major, is a “comedy, but with substance.”
“It tells the story of a group of friends at a high school reunion. The question asked is if there is life after high school?” Stevenson said.
Meghan Penny, 28, drama major, directs the comedy “This is a Test,” written by Stephen Gregg, a play about a student taking the “most important test of his life,” or so he thinks.
“Nothing goes his way,” Penny said. “It’s that case of where anything that can go wrong will go wrong. I liked what it had to say, it kind of comments on the idea of the over anxiety and pressure that we put on ourselves when, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter.”
The third play is titled “Dancing with a Devil,” an emotional drama written by Brooke Berman and directed by Colette Toomer Cruz, the most experienced director of the three.
“It’s about a young up-and-comer who is attacked by a man in her apartment,” Toomer Cruz said. “This one traumatizing event changes her whole life.”
All of the directors said they chose their plays to direct because they were able to relate to the theme in the plays.
“Everybody can relate to it, in fact. Especially in a college setting where we have all these uncertainties about our futures,” Stevenson said.
This will be the first play he directs in front of a crowd, and he has arguably the hardest play to direct due to the specific range of emotions the actors have to portray.
“There is somebody who is a pirate, somebody who is a giraffe. It’s kind of told in an absurd style, but it’s talking about real issues,” Stevenson said.
Casting for the three plays proved to be competitive and difficult due to the high turnout for the auditions.
“It was a little nerve-racking at first because I knew that I had so many roles to cast,” Penny said.
The performances are at the Campus Theatre Oct. 15-16 at 8 p.m. for the price of $10.