“One-Act Play Festival” to showcase student work

Members of the One Act show called 'The Old Trooper' (from left to right) Jonathan Burrello, Andrew Bowcock, Siobhan Stewart, and Robert Chang.

Kelsey Heng

Beginning 8 p.m. this Thursday, May 8-9, student directors will be presenting the “One-Act Play Festival” at Biola’s Theatre 21. On Thursday, there will be five one-act plays and on Friday there will be four one-act plays. Student actors and directors have put many hours into rehearsing their plays.

Forrest Robinson, supervisor of the One-Act Play Festival said this is an opportunity for students to put on the show and it will take the place of Biola’s regular scheduled show. He added that he will be bringing some professional people from outside the school so that they can critique and choose the three best plays.

“My objective is to expose my students to the audience,” said Robinson. “I’m hands off on it! I’m just their helper.”

Sophomore Austin Flones, director and student in the Directing Theatre class, said their assignment was to pick the one-act plays and produce the performance. Every student became a director and they had to go through the process of finding their own actors, scripts and props as well as rehearsing and editing their plays.

“This weekend it will all come together, we will see how we did,” Flones said.

Since directors were not provided with a budget, students used their own money to finance the productions.

“I have put about 50 dollars in my play,” Flones said. He added that Robinson has been quite generous with allowing all directors to borrow equipment, props and costumes. As far as time goes, he said the directors were given about a month and half to choose and prepare the play.

“Everyone is very talented and I think it will be a good show overall, with all the directors,” said Flones. “I definitely think it will be a lot of fun, cause everyone has put a lot of work into it.”

There were rehearsals after rehearsals of diverse one-act plays from the early morning till late evening; Theatre 21 was occupied with actors and directors every hour. Actors rehearsed their lines, fixed their costumes and discussed the best possible ways to present their one-act play to the audience on a tight schedule.

One of the actors from the “The Actor’s Nightmare”, senior Robert Chang said, “It’s really great to work with these very talented fellow actors and perform alongside them.” Chang showed his excitement as he added, “I think its gonna be a lot of fun; there is a lot of great shows, great actors in these plays, and good short stories to get some entertainment.”

Robinson said it is vital to have an audience to fill Theatre 21 in order to help the student directors learn from the audience critiques on their one-act plays. He added that this is a chance to see three good shows for only five dollars: “Its one shoot, one time only!”