Boston University’s premiere performance groups are admired for the musicals, plays and improvisations they bring to life throughout the academic year. These performances usually require months of preparation, planning and most of all, rehearsal.
What would happen, then, if the ample rehearsal time were subtracted from the equation?
Such is the case with Combat, a yearly event where BU Stage Troupe, BU On Broadway, Wandering Minds and Liquid Fun come together to put on a show in just 24 hours. To add to this year’s excitement, BU Stage Troupe entered the performance with their Boston University Award of Excellence, which they won after Combat 2013.
Friday at 8 p.m., a team of writers selected from each performance group received an envelope containing the main ingredients their 20-minute play must include: a specific theme, line, prop and tech element. For Combat 2014, writers were faced with the challenge to create a “trick-or-treat or die” themed piece featuring the line “Oh captain, my captain,” a bottle of vodka and a pink wash of light.
“My favorite moment was getting our envelope at the beginning of the night,” said Emily Prescott, a writer for Stage Troupe and a junior in the School of Education. “Combat is one of my favorite annual things at BU, and there’s such a good energy about it.”
After opening the envelope, the brainstorming began. Once the writers had settled on an idea, one of them sat down and made a storyboard for the play, going scene by scene.
Snacking on pizza, the writers then passed the computer back and forth while writing their script and reading it aloud.
“The time limit’s definitely not as daunting as the time of night we have to do it in. You’re not exactly in peak mental form from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.,” Prescott said. “The hardest part of the night was the editing process. I volunteered to take the final script and make it reasonably coherent…I then fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 1 a.m.”
The writing process was finally complete by 6 a.m. on Saturday.
Two hours later, a team of actors met to receive the script, select a director and start rehearsal for an 8 p.m. show that same night. In the Tsai Performance Center lobby, Stage Troupe actors anxiously awaited their script. Finally, a few extremely exhausted writers entered the room.
Ali Edwards, a sophomore in the College of General Studies, and Michael Gobiel, an SED junior, described a pair of parallel worlds in which the play takes place. One world exists as the physical manifestation of a bowl of candy left outside an empty house. The other world is inhabited by a troop of antsy 10-year-old trick-or-treaters raring to get some candy.
Once the show was cast and a director was assigned, the writers went to bed as the actors set out to bring the script to life.
The first step for most performance groups was a read-through of the script. Then it was on to blocking and memorizing.
“[The writers create] a simple yet memorable script. This makes it easy when the actors come to rehearse, so they can easily remember their lines and the melodies for the songs,” said Christopher Kuiken, the membership vice president of BU On Broadway and a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. “If something isn’t working, or is too complicated, we adjust the script…As we rehearse, actors also add little bits that really take the show’s personality to another level.”
A crucial element in the work throughout the day is the tech. From about noon until show time, a team of techies met with each group to review and facilitate every show’s needs, from costumes and props to lighting and sound.
“We had to synthesize the needs for each show to fit the others while still wanting to make each show unique,” said Annie Tillis, the light designer for Combat, vice president of BU On Broadway and a senior in CAS.
Since they are responsible for teching every group’s show, the time crunch is just as stressful for the tech team as it is for writers and actors, Tillis said.
“The most challenging part definitely depends on whichever tech aspect you are working on,” she said. “Personally, from working on lights, my hardest part is running the show live. Timing is sometimes difficult, and we have little practice.”
Around 6 p.m. on Saturday, each group gets a single run-through with tech elements. And then, the show must go on.
This year, the actors were fortunate enough to perform in front of a full house in the Student Theater at Agganis Arena. With standing room only, all Combat participants eagerly poked their heads through lobby doors to see what their peers had created.
The lights came up on improv group Liquid Fun first. Unlike the Combat participants, this entourage had not opened their envelope 24 hours prior. Instead, they revealed its contents to both the audience and themselves for the first time at the start of the show.
“We just go out there, get our game on and have fun with it,” said Marc Finn, a junior in the College of Communication.
Liquid Fun’s lack of prep-time made for no lack of laughs. The audience burst into hysterics when Bruce Willis told his daughter that she is actually dead, just in time for “Spoiler Alert” to tell Willis that he is actually dead, too. Once Christopher Walken entered the scene, the designated “Movie Watcher” exclaimed, “This is the weirdest Lifetime movie ever!”
The laughter continued as Wandering Minds presented an original “whodunit” mystery – specifically, who stole the vodka?
“Wandering Minds Combat makes frequent use of dark comedy, so this year’s theme fell right into our alley,” said Phoebe Horgan, the secretary of Wandering Minds and a CAS junior. “‘Children’ turn into ‘teenagers,’ and from there, we added in the mystery solving teens, while somewhat parodying and referencing the ‘Scooby-Doo’ gang.”
Finally, the vodka was found and total brawl broke out as each person tried to claim his or her share — and it all took place in a flood of pink light.
Stage Troupe provided the audience with a fair share of literal combat. As the Halloween candy struggled to survive another brutal attack by the vicious trick-or-treaters, an all-out slow motion battle ensued. There were not many survivors, but one candy emerged victorious: that old, linty breath mint no one wants at the bottom of the trick-or-treat pillowcase.
In a surprise twist, the evil Cain — whose goal was to steal everyone’s candy — was defeated when the children’s fearless leader, Maggie, threw Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups on top of him. Just before doing so, her fellow trick-or-treaters honored her with the admirable salute, “Oh captain, my captain.”
The night closed with BU On Broadway’s murder mystery musical. At a costume party, all guests were ready for a long night of partying when one of them dropped dead. A blind detective interviewed every guest. Suspects took their turn pleading their cases in song. In the end, everyone arrived at the same conclusion: “Don’t drink the raspberry Svedka.” The final musical number that was just too catchy to forget.
In their reflections, many participants said Combat not only gave them a chance to perform, but also a priceless bonding experience between groups of people with an unmatched love of performance.
“With limited opportunities for crossover between groups,” said Eli Brenna, vice president of Stage Troupe and a COM junior, “combat provides us with the chance to interact and create with all four different groups.”
