KTS: Infringement Festival – Day 4
My favourite KTS event is the Infringement Festival, where all plays are written by students and voted on for the chance to be featured in the Best of the Fest on Saturday. If you couldn’t make it to the first few events, worry not, because you can still catch shows on Friday and Saturday.
I love the Infringement Festival because it allows students an opportunity to express their creativity as playwrights, in addition to the company’s already outstanding theatrical abilities in directing, producing, design and acting. I personally love to see what clever, humorous, witty and downright insightful plays these students can come up with.
Thursday’s showing included four equally wonderful plays:
“Happy Place” by Emma Graveson
This play was short and sweet, humorous and clever with its cyclical ending. It‘s about a young woman and her husband, and a former lover who returns to ask for her hand. The setting was simple: chairs and a table set with teacups and a teapot. The costumes were also interesting. The actress wore a white, boned bodice and crinoline cage without any overdress, so it exposed her legs. That the dress is left to the imagination of the viewer is funny in that people usually tell performers to picture the audience in their underwear, rather than the other way around. Though minimal, the props are important to this play, and they are used effectively to add humour to the dialogue. However, clearer visibility of the facial expressions would further emphasize the humour.
“Men of Principle” by Connor Adsett, Cameron Van Buskirk, Dylan Jackson, Katie Lawrence, and Alex Retzer
This is a sobering play about a drunken frat party gone terribly wrong, and is based on the true story of Timothy Piazza, the 19-year-old boy who died in the Penn State hazing incident. Although it has a dark theme, this play is wonderfully performed. As they set the stage for the play, the actors were already in character, making the scene change part of the performance. One thing to keep in mind is how shadows may block the projection on the backdrop.
The play takes place in the frat house and goes through the events of the night at different times. The most important takeaway from this play is to remember to be prosocial at all times because you never know when a fun moment could take a horrible turn.
Thank you to the cast and crew for this performance.
“After 2 am” by Abiezer Eduardo “Eddie” Cuevas
This play is an interesting one. There is more of a focus on character study and development than on storyline or action. The play takes place in two separate scenes, both of which are visible at all times. We see Philip on his bed while Noah sits, obviously restless, in a chair with his phone downstage. Noah faces a different direction, which helps create the division between the scenes. The play follows the two characters over a phone call, where Noah, a distressed husband, calls his friend Philip for advice. The story doesn’t come to a resolution so much as the characters take the audience on a very personal, emotional story.
“Black Box Record” by Ian Sifton
The writing of this play is impressively insightful and simply must be seen, as any attempt of mine to describe it will fail to capture its essence. Put rather simply, the story follows the main character’s inner battle between anxiety and zen, personified by an actor in red and in blue, literally arguing over what the right thing to do is. The two internal characters portray an inner dialogue, even rehearsing potential scenarios, which I’m sure we’ve all done before; the worst-case outcome and a hopeful ideal. The relatable and somewhat melodramatic nature of the characters makes this play humorous yet deeply insightful.
I highly enjoyed all of these plays for different reasons and I certainly couldn’t choose a favourite, so I’m excited to see which are performed this Saturday. And I hope to see you there as well!
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