Written by Sara Hook \/\/ Photo by Madison Meyer<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Department of Theatre\u2019s Summer Dinner Theatre productions are popular among Searcy residents, and this summer was no different. This year\u2019s plays included the productions of \u201cArsenic and Old Lace,\u201d and \u201cThe Musical Comedy Murders of 1940.\u201d Only a few dinner theatre programs have been performed during the school year, one of them being the last summer 2022 production, \u201cThe Play that Goes Wrong.\u201d Director of the play and department chair Steven Frye said those plays that are continued are chosen because they involve a lot of students or alumni and showcase a particular aspect of the theatre program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[The actors] committed to stay with us through the reprise,\u201d Frye said. \u201cSome of them are actually working in other states, and they’ll be going home after all of this, because several are alumni that are working with us on the show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The students who work for the Summer Dinner Theatre program work eight-hour days in the summer, alongside professional staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur students get to work beside their professors and go, \u2018Oh, yeah, they really are a good performer. Maybe they know what they’re talking about,\u2019\u201d Frye said. \u201cThe same thing holds through with design or construction. When you’re working beside our staff, it’s a great learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senior and stage manager Kat Ream said the professors involved were very encouraging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf I am being completely honest, I was at first a little intimidated,\u201d Ream said. \u201cWe were co-workers for the summer, but [they] were still my professors and helped me learn more about the process of theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Play that Goes Wrong\u201d involves technical work with the stage \u2014 floors collapsing, pictures falling and walls caving in, among many other things. It took several days to perfect those technical aspects, Ream said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis play in particular took quite a bit of patience, and trials on how things would work,\u201d Ream said. \u201cThis is a show where we needed that extra time to perfect everything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The play is every director\u2019s nightmare, Frye said, and it runs because of the people working backstage to operate the set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe set itself, and the crew running it backstage is almost a character in the show itself, because things fall off walls, things change, strange things happen on the set that you go, \u2018How did that happen?\u2019 Frye said. \u201cAnd it’s because there are a lot of dedicated professionals working to make those things happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The technical aspect was not the only challenging part of the play to pull off. Senior acting major Asher Patten said there is more external work than internal in comedies like \u201cThe Play that Goes Wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor these kinds of things \u2014 this is farce, this is over-the-top comedy \u2014 the challenge is, I think, the physicality: sculpting a character, and how he moves, and the faces he makes,\u201d Patten said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upcoming theatre productions include the Homecoming musical: \u201cCinderella,\u201d \u201cThe Rivals\u201d and \u201cThe Crucible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Written by Sara Hook \/\/ Photo by Madison Meyer The Department of Theatre\u2019s Summer Dinner Theatre productions are popular among Searcy residents, and this summer was no different. This year\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15192,"featured_media":17955,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15192"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}