The theater department hosted its second annual Chad’s Night Out, a 24-hour play festival, Sept. 6-7. The event concluded Sept. 7 at 8:30 p.m. after a performance of the five plays that participating students had taken from a concept to the stage over the course of just 24 hours.
“Chad’s Night Out serves several purposes for this program: the first is to help students get their foot in the door to participating in the theater organization on campus who wouldn’t normally get the opportunity to do so, since the event is open to anyone to be an actor or technician,” theater director Gary Morris said. “Also, a lot of professional theaters will hold 24-hour play festivals that are open to community members, so for students wanting to pursue that down the road professionally they will have that experience and know how to represent themselves well.”
Students who chose to participate in the event were split into five groups: playwrights, directors, stage managers, technicians and actors. The playwrights were the first group to be summoned for their shift, which began Sept. 6 at 8:30 p.m.
“Last year I participated as an actor, but I like writing stories a lot and I think I work better when it’s super late at night, so being a playwright kind of just worked out,” senior Micah Balatbat, who wrote the play Serenity Tavern, said. “Everybody in that writing room was running off either coffee, hot chocolate or energy drinks, and it was definitely an experience. I had three cups of hot chocolate.”
The theme for this year’s Chad’s Night Out was “Chad’s Realms: A Journey Through Fantasy.” This prompt gave the playwrights a starting point for coming up with their stories, which were otherwise entirely up to their imagination.
“I was so excited when I heard the prompt, because I love fantasy,” Balatbat said. “I like D&D a lot, and I love the idea of taverns, so I thought of meshing them together with a group of retired adventurers running a tavern; it’s also very much the found family trope.”
At 5:30 a.m., the playwrights handed off their scripts to the student directors. Stage managers arrived at 6:30 a.m., followed by technicians at 7 a.m., and finally the actors at 8 a.m.
“This was my first time participating, so going into it I didn’t really know what was happening, but I was very pleasantly surprised,” sophomore Emily Congemi, who played a medieval rapper named Eleanor Skittles in the play Cursed and Confused: A Kingdom’s Quest, said. “Our student director was Julius Brumfield, and he was honestly such a good director. He was really open to suggestions, and it was a super chill environment; there was no tension or awkwardness.”
Students were assigned their play groups by a random popsicle stick draw, and they rehearsed in those groups until 3 p.m. Some students, however, were involved in the production of all five of the plays, including Jonah Hughes and Annaleigh Powell on props and costumes, Emma Brisson on sound, Kylie Waters on lights and Addie Autrey, who was the assistant producer and emcee of the event.
“It’s all up to the students, [the directors] are just there to kind of be a support for anything they might need to make sure the ship stays afloat,” Mr. Morris said. “They write the plays, direct the shows, pull the costumes, decide what scenic elements they want on stage; We’re just here to be adults in the building to make sure there are no fires.”
Tickets for the event were sold at the door for $5, and additional tickets for the purpose of voting on the best play were sold for $1. All proceeds from the event will go towards theater’s senior scholarships given at the end of the year.
“We tripled our numbers in terms of student participation and audience attendance from last year to this year, which is really awesome, and our goal is that this will just keep on growing,” Mr. Morris said. “We raised around $400 in senior scholarships from this, so this is definitely a step in the right direction of what we want this to be.”
After almost 24 hours of writing, workshopping and learning lines, the five plays were presented to an audience at 7 p.m. The order of the plays was as follows: Wizards Can’t Be Seen in Photos, written by Seth Townsend; Dark Legacy, written by Femi Fabumuyi; Serenity Tavern, written by Micah Balatbat; Cursed and Confused: A Kingdom’s Quest, written by Bella Cavalier; and The Joke Thief, written by Andy Borchetta.
“Performing this was a good chance for me to improve on my improv skills, especially with most of my raps,” Congemi said. “ If I could go back and change something, it would be me having my raps totally down beforehand, but otherwise I think it was pretty fun. My favorite part of our show was the dance battle at the end, because I got to hit the stanky leg.”
The event came to a close with the announcement of the “Ultimate Chads”— the group that had received the most audience votes for best play. This honor was awarded to the Serenity Tavern group.
“Seeing my play performed, it was as I imagined and a lot more,” Balatbat said. “When you’re working on something alone, you can’t necessarily see the whole picture, so actually being able to see it on the stage, everything was beyond my expectations and I was just so proud of everybody.”
