As the crowd settled in for the evening in the cozy darkness of the Wittenberg theatre, there was a bristle of excitement darting through the air.
Friends and family of Wittenberg students had taken their seats and were ready to see what Lena Pirt, ‘21, Lexi Gallion,’19, and Chris Riviere, ‘19, had prepared for the evening.
Suddenly, the lights went dark and the audience was first thrust into the world that Pirt molded together.
The play began with a woman sitting at a table reading a book. A man entered after her and asks “Is this seat taken?”
From this point on, the audience was taken through the mayhem and mishaps that follow a married couple and their attempts to spice up their lives through the medium of Roleplaying.
Along the way, they meet another couple who take Roleplay to a different kind of extreme. These extremes find a way into both couple’s lives and things take a turn for the crazy and confused.
In a flurry of miscommunications between the couples, everybody’s partners end up distraught and angry.
At the end of the play, the initial man appeared back onstage and his wife re-enters. “Is this seat taken?” she asks.
The theatre faded to black and applause broke through the dark room.
As the lights went back up, Gallion’s play unfolded as four black boxes were settled in the middle of the room.
Four people appeared hesitantly with a great tension pulling between them.
Suddenly, the music blared and they each picked up a different box and dawned hoodies.
The play then narrowed in on a poetic layout of the four individuals–a woman grounded by meditation, a young man with unique insight, a champion athlete and a man plagued by social injustice.
The four work together to define who they are, not by their hoodies, but who they define themselves to be through the sleeves of their hoodies.
As it becomes seemingly impossible for the man to repair the way the world sees him in his hoodie, defeated, he says, “My hoodie tyrannizes me.”
By the end of the play, the audience was left questioning the state of societal norms and even how everyone is seen through their own hoodies.
To round out the night, Riviere’s play began with moody lighting and a mother speaking to her son on his birthday.
As the audience is wrapped up in this touching display of affection between the two, a loud “CUT!” was yelled from the audience and the lights suddenly became brighter.
When our eyes finally adjusted, we learned that the man now walking onto the stage is a director and the display that we had been watching was a facade: a scene for a movie.
The woman’s son is slowly introduced to the crazy world of showbiz as the director explained that his whole life has been a form of deception and that this director is actually his father- -the one he had been told disappeared when he was a baby.
As the scenes unfurled, getting more chaotic and ridiculous by the second, the man learns that the “script” for this movie holds a surprising ending and he is supposed to sign away his life.
With one plot twist to another, this play didn’t disappoint and Riviere plotted out each movement of the actors flawlessly.
The audience filled the evening with laughter, whistling and cheers as the final actors bowed and left the stage.
