Midterm assignments are typically stressful for students. Imagine that yours took place on a stage with a spotlight shining down on you as a crowd of dozens watched.
That’s the challenge Algonquin’s performing arts students are facing, as they’ve been assigned the task of creating and performing weekly Friday evening shows consisting of several plays and other displays of talent between them.
The shows are worth more than just marks, though.
Roughly an hour in length, they are produced entirely by performing arts students. As each student rotates through different roles from writing and directing to acting to managing the lights, they experience a small but relevant taste of what theatre industry professionals do for a living.
“Every Halloween, I play the game Clue,” said Julianna Gartke, one of the three playwrights and directors for the Oct. 21 show. “I wanted to make a murder mystery.”
Gartke’s play combined humour and horror to tell the story of three high school students who find their teacher dead in detention.
The three plays performed on Oct. 21 shared a theme of ‘life and death’ as announced at the beginning of the show. Each play showed a different take on the theme—emotional, funny and mysterious.
Gartke’s play showed the latter. She admitted that although she was happy to see her creation manifest on stage, she was nervous at first.
“As a director you want to have control over every detail, but you can’t,” said Gartke. “You have to have faith in your actors.”
Her faith paid off. A few chairs weren’t set up the way they were supposed to be, but instead of letting it affect their performance, the actors played it off as part of the performance, leaving the audience unaware of the mix-up.
“I was in a daze,” Gartke said. “I was like, ‘oh my god!’ But the actors were amazing and just went with it.”
Their ability to act on the fly can be explained by the improv training the performing arts students receive as part of their course load, which also includes vocal training and career planning in the theatre industry.
Another result of improv training is “Darrin”, a quirky character wearing tights and neon pink socks that entertains the audience with bizarre yoga lessons and snarky rants between plays. Nick Laronde, whose performance as Darrin received laughter from the audience, says that he entered the performing arts program because he loves making people laugh.
“My father did a lot of musical productions and plays, my cousin is a conductor in the Ottawa area and my sister is a music therapist in Nova Scotia,” said Laronde.
Belonging to a family of performers, Laronde got his chance to shine as the writer and director of one of the plays performed on Oct. 21 titled Hellbent. The play humorously told the story of a girl hired by Lucifer in hell to cause mischief back on Earth.
After the show, Laronde admitted that he was excited to manage the lighting of a future show.
“Everyone has said that it’s been a challenge to memorize where everything is and get the timing right,” he said, “so I feel excited to see how hard it really is.”
Both Darrin and Hellbent evoked plenty of laughter from the audience.
On the contrary, the crowd watched in silence during the emotional performance of Dreaming Recovery, a play about the challenges a young girl faces after her father commits suicide.
Its writer and director, Laura Christensen-Cheffins, says she was “really happy” with how the play was performed and how its message came across.
“Despite the negative things that are happening in your life, life still goes on and you can be successful,” she said of the play’s message. “Moving on makes you stronger.”
This was Christensen-Cheffins’ first time writing a play, as most of her experience as a performer came in singing.
“I’ve been singing since I could talk,” she said. “I was always in love with every Disney movie and the music.”
Appropriately, Christensen-Cheffins sang Colors of the Wind from Disney’s Pocahontas between plays at the Oct. 28 show.
She also acted that night, along with Gartke and Laronde in plays that shared the theme of “overcoming”.
The three of them will find themselves in other roles at their next show in room 112 in Algonquin’s N-building.
Shows will be held every Friday at 5 p.m. with the final show taking place on Nov. 25.
Entry is free.