Student-produced performance set to debut Wednesday, March 13th
Lights! Colors! Action! “Crayon – A Colorful Evening of Scenes” is a collaborative student-produced show set to debut Wednesday, March 13. Associate professor and Theater Director Bart McHenry shares his excitement for the production. “It’s a lot of fun to be had.”
The comedic theme of the play comes from a whimsical study of how our language oddly references color with phrases like feeling blue, tickled pink, green with envy, caught red-handed, yellow streak. Students wrote scenes using these colors as metaphors for emotion. “We had fun centering the ideas of how colors are used in language or have meaning,” McHenry says.
Mason Ramirez / The Mainstream
According to McHenry, a common misconception about the play is that it is meant for a younger audience, but the play has a lot more meaning. “The play is actually a collection of comedy scenes ranging from the topics of first dates to job interviews to the struggles of being a balloon at a birthday party,” McHenry says. The first date scene is one of McHenry’s favorites. “Dating is always fun for comedy scenes because people can play a character of somebody who would be an awful date. It is always fun to see students come up with different characters,” McHenry adds.
The fast-paced performance showcases an anthology of 19 scenes, some as short as two minutes. Eleven students put the production together: seven actors and four students as production staff. The stagecraft class built acting boxes and painted the set in all primary colors with a lighthearted style that adds to the play’s spirit and reinforces the theme of color.
McHenry notes how close the cast has become with each other over the course of rehearsals. “The two favorite things I see in this production are, one, how the staff has really grown together and enjoy each other’s company, having a fun time putting on a show and, second, how many have improved as performers. The seven actors are memorizing a lot of lines.”
Students who wanted to be in the production did not need any prior theater experience, and those who were a bit shy could request a smaller role. There was always room for people to join. “Anyone who wants to be in a production can be in it,” McHenry says.
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