A Fun Night of Music

Well, it’s that time of the semester again. Walk up to just about any Erskine student these days, and they’ll tell you, “This week I have two papers to turn in, three projects due, two tests, and a quiz.” Oh, yes, and then finals. During the rush of these last few weeks before summer, these words of Aristotle’s become particularly apt: “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

Christine singing Sondheim's witty piece "Lovely"

Heather singing "I Remember Sky"--this girl has an incredibly rich, full voice. Gorgeous!

In addition to approaching deadlines, innumerable concerts, events, and theater productions are taking place on the Erskine campus about this time. Balancing the academic and the social, thus, becomes quite the challenge, but I was extremely glad this past Thursday that a friend persuaded me to go to a recital put on by Erskine’s voice studios. I had vast amounts of homework waiting to be done, but I nevertheless took a break long enough to head over to the auditorium for “An Evening with Sondheim”—and I’m so glad I did!

Everyone on the program did a fabulous job, and the repertoire ranged from the stirring strains of “Johanna” and “Not While I’m Around” to more humorous selections like “Lovely” and “Children Will Listen.” It was a lot of fun to hear some extremely talented freshman sing solos for the first time. Christian and Heather sounded especially amazing, but I sadly don’t have any videos of their performances because I was too mesmerized by their singing to have the presence of mind to record it. Will—another freshman, to whom I happen to be related—gave an entertaining rendition of “Giants in the Sky,” acting as Jack from Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods. All in all, it was a fun and delightful evening and worth giving up some precious study time. But now, back to the books!

The cast taking a bow at the end of the show.

The Game’s Afoot!

Finishing off my Saturday, yesterday evening I headed down the road to Abbeville Opera House with a couple of friends to see a play, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily, directed by the professor of my acting class this semester, Michael Genevie.  When we found our seats, I opened the program to see that one of Erskine’s own, Dr. Brad Christie (English and Theatre professor, now the Dean), was playing Dr. Watson!  We enjoyed the suspense and humor, remembering our own experience last spring when Erskine put on a series of short Sherlock Holmes plays for dinner theatre.  After the show, we walked just around the corner from the opera house to Main Street Coffee Co. for some sweet treats (I had a delicious cinnamon bun) and coffee before heading back to Erskine.  It was the perfect end to round off a great Saturday.

Whodunit?

It was Mr. Green in the ballroom with the wrench!

Although the big fall play finished a couple of weeks ago, the semester was not over for the theatre department.  As a member and president of Erskine’s Alpha Psi Omega – a national honorary fraternity for theatre – I get to be involved in planning and carrying out other theatrical events in addition to plays.  This past week, for example, Alpha Psi Omega hosted a self-created murder mystery, the first ever edition of Clue: Erskine Edition.

Since the beginning of the semester the seven of us members have been planning this event, which is more complicated than you might think.  Luckily, one of our members, Bryce, took a class on detective fiction last J-term, so he took the lead in putting together the mystery.  We had to start by figuring out how to structure the game, give clues, and all the details of location, date, etc.  We ended up using many of the ideas of the game to set it up, as well as taking some from the Clue movie.

We set up six of the classic rooms from the board game in the areas surrounding Lesesne auditorium – the ballroom, study, lounge, library, dining room, and billiard room – and hid five of the six weapons throughout the rooms (the missing one being the murder weapon).  We had the six participating teams of students rotate throughout the six rooms, interviewing the six suspects who were stationed one in each room.  We also had clues hidden in the rooms, and through the interrogations of the characters the teams gained information to help them find the killer.

Six of the seven Alpha Psi Omega members played the main characters, the seventh being the butler (of course!).  We all dressed in black with accents of our color; I, for example, was the flighty and affluent Mrs. Peacock, and wore a blue hat and scarf over my black dress, along with some peacock feather earrings that I borrowed from a friend.  We also enlisted the help of five other members of the theatre department to play characters such as Mr. Boddy, the maid, the cook, etc.  All of us adopted ridiculous, melodramatic characteristics, playing up our roles to make it more fun.  We had an opening skit to introduce all of the characters and the plot, and after a group had submitted the correct suspect, weapon, and room of the murder, we closed with a dramatic final scene and awarded the prize money.

Overall it was a great experience; though there were difficulties in working out some of the logistics, we all greatly enjoyed it – both the actors and the participants.  It went over so well that many students have said they would love to play again, so we hope to do a sequel in the spring!

All the world’s a stage…

What a week!  Last Monday through Saturday I spent at least four hours a day in our theatre and backstage, between dress rehearsals and three performances of our fall play, Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Overall, it was a great experience, but there is nothing so tiring (and fulfilling) as the final week of preparations and running a show.

Amber doing aging make-up on Rebecca, the Lady Gonzala

One element of theatre that I do not have much experience with is special make-up, but for this show I got to work a lot in this unknown territory.  I am used to doing normal stage make-up, but this time I got to experiment with aging and color make-up.  My friend Amber and I were in charge of making a few of the characters look moderately aged, so we had the daunting task of making college students appear on stage to have believable wrinkles and grey hair.  Also, for two of the characters I experimented with special color make-up to give the former (my character) sort of flames or wings around the eyes, and the latter spots of scale-like skin.  It was a daunting task, but we learned and it became easier every time.

Working on fancy eye make-up for my character, Ariel

Something that I enjoy about doing a Shakespeare play (every two years at Erskine) is the chance to work with a larger cast.  Because we have a smaller theatre department, we tend to do shows with a smaller cast; but when we do Shakespeare, as in this play, we bring many new people into the theatre.

On the other hand, there are challenges as well, the main one being that we do not have a very extensive capability for our sets and lighting.  Although we have a fairly good number of committed actors who have experience and skills on stage, we do not have very many students who specialize in set design or lighting.  However, we are all willing to learn and do what we can, so somehow we always make it work; for example, in this play we experimented more with the lighting, adding a little more to the effects of different scenes.

Although it always seems to be over quickly, after months of preparation it is nice to have more free time all of the sudden!  Besides, there are always new projects to be working on, and more upcoming performances to be preparing for at Erskine, so there is no shortage of enjoyable activities to occupy my time.  On to the next one!

The cast of Shakespeare's The Tempest

 

An Evening at the Theatre

I am a lover of the arts: music, theatre, fine arts, writing, dance. . . so even when I am not involved in these, I also enjoy partaking in them from the other side, as part of the audience.  After all, what is a play, opera, ballet, poem, or sculpture without someone to enjoy it?  The arts are popular at Erskine, but sometimes students forget that there are great opportunities in the surrounding communities to enjoy the arts as well.

A lovely Saturday evening.

Abbeville, a mere fifteen minutes away, is a small community that offers many such opportunities, especially through the Abbeville Opera House.  Curiously enough, this historic building in the rural upstate is actually the state theatre of South Carolina!  Every year they put on a full season with about a play a month, and other special shows between these.  One of my good friends, Amber, was in the opening show of the season, The Sound of Music, so I drove over with a couple of friends for the last run of the show.  We ended up sitting close to handful of more Erskine students who had the same idea.

It is always fun to see the original stage version of a musical, especially one as well-known as The Sound of Music, and that I have seen so many times in its movie version.  There’s nothing like a live show, especially at a local theatre showcasing the talents of people in the community.  After enjoying the play, we greeted Amber, who played Frau Schmidt, the family’s German housekeeper.  Finally, after lots of hugs, congratulations, and animated discussions of the play, we ended the evening in typical Erskine fashion – a trip to IHOP for fun conversation and good breakfast food at 11:30 pm.