'Shorts' play festival features University Players work, performances

The new Studio Theatre in the Lee Norvelle Theatre and Drama Center was filled beyond capacity for the first of two showings of “Shorts: A Student Play Festival,” which was performed by University Players Friday.

The simple production consisted of six separate short plays, each written, directed and performed by students. Sets were changed consistently between the pieces, and some actors even performed different characters in more than one play.

The plays averaged 15 minutes each.

The themes of the shows spanned from dramatic to comedic, giving audience members the chance to have moments of truth and comedic relief.

The plays included “Something Solid, Something Dead” by Patrick French, “12th Time’s a Charm” by senior Jordan Kay, “The Spoils of Pleasure” by senior Sean Magill, “What You’ve Got” by junior Allison Hillmann, “Beyond Happily Ever After” by Leslie Boyden and “Uncouth” by Paige Henry.

While each play had its own meaning and story behind the process, many of the writers said they hoped their scripts would enlighten and entertain the audience.

“I wanted to captivate the audience and pull them in through someone else’s eyes,” Kay said. “Going into this, I was scared because writing a play and watching it be performed are so different.”

Kay wasn’t the only writer with this fear.

Hillmann said she was equally as frightened about the presentation of her creation.

The 16-minute play Hillman wrote portrayed a time in her life when she was struggling with family issues and coming to terms with the realization that people aren’t perfect. In the play, the character Coryn, played by Franki Levenson-Campanale, was an abstract representation of a younger version of herself.

Coryn’s attitude toward the issue was similar to Hillmann’s reaction to family troubles. Additionally, Hillmann said that she leans on her friends as much as Coryn leans on her friend, Manny.

Hillmann said the process of her writing this play was therapeutic.

“It’s hard to realize that because people have a problem that they’re not bad people,” Hillmann said.

In the play, Coryn goes through the struggle of realizing that although her father is imperfect, he is still her father and still strives to make things work for him and his family.

“You know that disappointed feeling you have when you find out adults aren’t these godly people? It hurts when you realize that,” Hillmann said.

Hillmann initially created the play for a class. But for “Shorts,” the reason she presented her play was to have a character who everyone could relate to — someone who could help viewers grow.

Magill had a similar idea for his play. The characters, although outlandish, ultimately had traits that were easy for audience members to relate to.

In his production, the main character, Chris, talks about a yellow crayon streak on the wall that he drew as a child. It never seems to go away no matter how hard he scrubs the streak and thus the task seemed pointless and repetitive.

Magill said that he retrieved the metaphor from his own memory.

“As a child, I’d always been afraid of work,” Magill said. “I feel a lot of times, people’s lives do end up like that. Pointless and repetitive action.”