Drama around the clock

By Pablo Sanchez
Staff writer

The 24-Hour Play festival is Saturday, Feb. 10 at 7:30 p.m. and is located in the BJ Warner Recital Hall in Stringer Fine Arts Center.

When it comes to the 24-Hour Play Festival, there are four skits that the students work to write, audition for, rehearse and then, finally, perform.

“Memorizing your lines can be hard because some are short and some are long,” Isaac Glover, a Hutchinson Community College student majoring in the drama said.

“Keep moving forward,” Glover said. “Don’t give up, life moves on.”

For those involved with theater and acting, drama can be both rewarding and stressful according to another drama major, Jocelyn Reed.

“There are going to be bad days and performances,” Reed said.

When Reed on the stage, she believes that the audience hardly notices her or isn’t paying attention.

“Freshmen year is good time to express yourself,” Reed said. “It gives you an open window to experience new things.”

Reed and Glover are both involved with the 24-Hour Play Festival and will be performing along with their peers on Saturday.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Reed said. “The more you fail, the more you learn. It’s more about diving into the character to get the full aspect of what you love doing the most.”

Everyone shows up at 8:30 Friday evening and does a brief introduction and audition if you’re an actor. Actors then can present any special skills they have that may be incorporated into the show.

Following this, everyone leaves except the playwrights. The playwrights write through the night and have a script done before the actors get there at 7. Then the actors and directors and technicians have until 730 that night to prepare everything needed to bring the shows to life. Curtain goes up at 730 and we see 6 new plays.

This year we have 42 people participating in various capacities

In order for any show to happen, there needs to be lighting and sound technicians, and everything has to be as spot on as possible. Reed and Glover both have experience as technicians and both said they loved it even though understanding when to cue the lights and sound at the right time is a challenge.

Deidre Ensz-Mattox, Director of Theatre at HutchCC, fell in love with theater in high school, where she acted and participated in plays.

She attended HutchCC many years ago, where she had her first college theater experience. Ensz-Mattox said she loves her work. She said she wouldn’t want to do anything else. Ensz-

She teaches all of the performance-based courses and is the faculty sponsor for the college’s chapter of Delta Psi Omega, the National Collegiate Theater Organization.

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