One-act plays, musical revue complete NE theater season
by Ashley Clark, reporter

    NE drama department wraps up its semester with I’ve Got Rhythm, a banging, crashing, stomping rhythmic musical revue, and Excerpts: A Director’s Showcase, a showcase of 11 student directorial debuts.

   For Excerpts, audiences will be able to enjoy the final product of what started off as a directing class. Students studied directing styles and different ways to approach a theatrical production. They selected a one-act play edited into a 10-20 minute excerpt, then chose the cast.

   Many of the students share the same theatrical preference, as over half of the selections are dark comedies by either David Ives or Christopher Durang.

   Student directors are learning to direct not only for stage, but also for camera as the one-acts are being made into a mini-movie by the TV production class.

   “It sort of brings the two classes together,” Jakie Cabe, director of theatre for NE campus, said.

   Cabe believes the directing experience will benefit the students as actors as well.

   “They’re getting a different respect for what a director has to do,” he said. “This, in turn, will make them much more disciplined and responsible actors.”

   The Philadelphia, directed by Eric Cherry; Variations on the Death of Trotsky, directed by James Warila; Wanda’s Visit, directed by Jennifer Dodd; Tone Clusters, directed by Alfred Ramirez; For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, directed by James Fryar; and The Informer, directed by Hal Weller, will be performed Thursday, May 2, at 7:30 p.m.

   W.A.S.P, directed by Derek Whitener; Captive Audience, directed by Julianne Carson; Here We Are, directed by Sarah Trimble; Funeral Parlor, directed by Tonya Stapleton; and Laundry and Bourbon, directed by Stephen Levall, will be performed Friday, May 3, at 7:30 p.m.

   All shows will be performed Saturday, May 4, at 2 p.m. Admission is free; however, donations to the Stacy Schronk Theatre Scholarship are welcomed and greatly appreciated.

   Featuring numbers with rhythm in the title or with a rhythmic sound or theme, the revue runs May 7-10.

   Along with familiar torch songs, it will include rhythmic skits and the thespians moving into a vocal orchestra creating what is called a “sound morph.”

   “Morphing” is probably the main element of the production as the numbers do not abruptly end on the last note of the song; instead, one performer’s exit may become another’s entrance.

   For example, The Trolley Song begins the theme of trains, which eventually turns into a schoolroom and then becomes a gossiping cheerleading squad who sing Pick-A-Little from The Music Man.

   It’s A Hard Knock Life from Annie will be sung by a football team instead of the young residents of an all-girls orphanage.

   This, of course, will not be completed unless it morphs into the Aggie Stomp, which becomes a high-school dance, which becomes a phone call about the dance, during which we find out who’s Going Steady with whom. Eventually they all grow up, get married, and the scene morphs into a jailhouse where the widowed wives sing an ode to murder, Cell Block Tango from Chicago.

   “… and they lived happily ever after.”

   Music Theatre Workshop students Josh Colson, Ember Harris, Cindy Harris, Levall, Warila, Stapleton, Jim Robert, Kathryn Tyrone, Michelle Velarde, Darla Sommerlott, Traysa Waak, White-ner, Eric Cherry, Krystle Conrad, Gina Elkins, Ryan Moulds and Catherine Nuttall will morph, improvise and cut-and-paste familiar scenes on a Stomp-esque stage setting of ramps and platforms scattered with rhythmic tools, props and household items.

   I’ve Got Rhythm’s overall mode is a reflection of Cabe’s skills and training as an actor.

   “I’m always thinking of different ways to make rhythm,” he said. “In improv, you always think of yourself as rhythm or as part of a band. Everyone is part of a whole,” he added.

   Performances begin at 8 p.m. For reservations, call 817-515-6687.