Valerie Dominguez
Staff Writer
Wednesday night marked the beginning of the four-night student-directed one-acts event in Dailey Theatre.
The one-acts are part of the finals of the directing class to give the students hands-on experience in directing.
Travis Snyder-Eaton directed “Finer Noble Gases,” the first show of the night in the Jane Dibbell Cabaret.
The production tells the story of a group of guys who have wasted their lives away through drug abuse and laziness.
The scene opened with the characters Chase and Staple sitting on a couch as Linch enters and breaks their television.
The rest of the act followed these messed up guys in search of a new television, while regaling the audience with stories of drugged up experiences.
The oddity of the characters brought laughter to the audience as the random acts of drugged wastefulness continued on throughout the act, including a gay neighbor with a knife collection and Linch bringing a random child into his room.
The set was well done for the act, with empty beer cans, pizza boxes and McDonald’s happy meal boxes strewn about.
Clothes were scattered everywhere and pills were laid out on the table, showing the obvious sign of drug use.
“I liked the meaning of the play,” freshman business administration major Jessica De Luna said. “The ending was the highlight of the whole thing; it told us the bum life isn’t the way to go.”
The second show was “The Romancers,” directed by junior theater arts major Zachary Green and took place in Dailey Theatre.
This production starts with the two lovers, Sylvette and Percinet, on opposite sides of a brick wall.
Sylvette listens to Percinet recite lines from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
The act continued with the fathers of both characters faking a rivalry as a way to get their children to marry each other.
It was a simple setting of two benches and a brick wall, but the characters brought much life to the set.
“It was really fun directing this play,” Green said. “I went through the whole audition process and I’m really happy with the people I casted.”
Marc Okimura, sophomore theater arts major, played Percinet’s father Bergamin.
“We all had a great time going big with our characters and playing around with the lines,” Okimura said. “It feels as if we’ve been acting together for years, when we’ve only been at it for a couple of weeks.”
“I really liked how they had dialogue towards the audience,” freshman math major Daniel Gonzalez said. “I also liked how the actors’ facial expressions really went along with the roles they were playing.”
This set of plays will be put on again at 7:30 p.m. tonight in the Jane Dibbell Cabaret. The second set of performances will be at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow.
Valerie Dominguez can be reached at valerie.dominguez@laverne.edu.
