In review
Janurary 2017's MUsical Happenings
By Ken Forbeck
ONe act of Madness
By Marty Forbeck
Right before Thanksgiving break, as in 3:45pm on the last day of school before break, a strange little production quietly went down in the Small Auditorium. This is not a review of that. This kind of event would typically be reported with some sort of critical review, but it’s almost impossible to evaluate this event as a work. It closer resembles a brief, mad grab bag of insanity. The untitled production was a one act WW2 tragedy, put on by a small company of 15 or so students and presented by Jason Ennis, who co-directed the production with Riley Ennocenti.
The production, beginning to end, only took about 10 minutes, and as a result the plot was pretty bare bones.It begins with a very small company of Allied soldiers being sent in to hold down a fort in a position that, their superiors assure them, will not be attacked by a large German force.It ends with the totally not foreshadowed death of almost every character.
The play featured loud pre-recorded noises of warfare, elaborate Nazi costumes, band stands wielded as weapons, as well as shouted vulgarities. Typically all of those things either outright prohibited or highly discouraged within the school, but artistic license has a way of getting around such things. Especially for a production which, all told, was only witnessed by 20 or so people and had only a single performance, all mocked up in only a couple of weeks.
The play was planned to take up 15 minutes, running to 4:00pm, but since it only took up 10 Jason Ennis came up on stage after the main event and announced that the rest of the time would be taken up by a, “modern art piece” of his called Nonsense, and that the audience was free to leave whenever they wanted.The cast came out from behind the curtain and proceeded to make random noises and do random actions all over the stage, most of which involved either throwing some prop or large plastic bin in a random direction, or doing the Worm.
Fascinated by the display on stage, almost no one in the audience left until, 4 minutes into the Nonsense, Jason Ennis just looked at the audience and said, “Nobody has anything better to do?”
The answer, apparently, was no.
The production, beginning to end, only took about 10 minutes, and as a result the plot was pretty bare bones.It begins with a very small company of Allied soldiers being sent in to hold down a fort in a position that, their superiors assure them, will not be attacked by a large German force.It ends with the totally not foreshadowed death of almost every character.
The play featured loud pre-recorded noises of warfare, elaborate Nazi costumes, band stands wielded as weapons, as well as shouted vulgarities. Typically all of those things either outright prohibited or highly discouraged within the school, but artistic license has a way of getting around such things. Especially for a production which, all told, was only witnessed by 20 or so people and had only a single performance, all mocked up in only a couple of weeks.
The play was planned to take up 15 minutes, running to 4:00pm, but since it only took up 10 Jason Ennis came up on stage after the main event and announced that the rest of the time would be taken up by a, “modern art piece” of his called Nonsense, and that the audience was free to leave whenever they wanted.The cast came out from behind the curtain and proceeded to make random noises and do random actions all over the stage, most of which involved either throwing some prop or large plastic bin in a random direction, or doing the Worm.
Fascinated by the display on stage, almost no one in the audience left until, 4 minutes into the Nonsense, Jason Ennis just looked at the audience and said, “Nobody has anything better to do?”
The answer, apparently, was no.
Craig variety show: The popular tradition continues
By Marty Forbeck