Justin Scheck, junior theater major, and Harriel Mack, senior communication major, rehearse one of thirty short plays on Tuesday night in Fredrickson Theater. PANTS’ "30 plays in 60 minutes" is at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. tomorrow and Friday night in Fredrickson Theater.
The Pantomime And Nontraditional Theatre Society is planning to perform the event “PANTS 30 plays in 60 minutes” a total of four times during dead week.
“The show isn’t in any particular order,” said Matthew Mahr, technical director of PANTs and senior theatre major. “The way they decide what show is next is the audience yells out numbers, and whatever the first number that somebody hears is the one that we do next. So, it’s completely non-linear.”
The group works on compiling the plays on a google drive throughout the semester, according to Andrew Ralston, member of PANTs and junior theatre major.
“Really the only rules that we have to follow, is that we have to be playing ourselves and we have to be playing ourselves in the here and the now,” said Fran Opheim, member of PANTs and senior theatre major.
Typically, the group ends up with more than thirty plays, and Ralston says that at some point the group meets to vote for which ones will be selected, giving authors an opportunity to give their opinion on why certain plays should be in the list.
“Generally everything that we do is super collaborative,” Opheim said. “It’s completely student run, we don’t have any faculty involved in this group, so there’s a lot of collaboration and problem solving that happens just between the students.”
The performances will take place at 7 p.m and at 9 p.m. Dec. 7 and 8 in Frederickson Theatre in Roosevelt Hall. The event is free to attend.
“It’s a fun time for people even if they don’t have any interest in theater, or don’t know anything about theater it’s very inclusive,” Mahr said. “There are plays that will make you laugh, plays that will make you cry, plays that will make you think, plays that at the end you’ll just be like ‘what even just happened.’”
All of the plays are original works by the members of PANTS, and they work all semester to write the plays and plan for the show.
“It doesn’t even have to be super theatrical you know, we have people who will just stand and give a monologue, it is such a therapeutic thing,” Ralston said. “It’s something we just are pouring our hearts out to these people about what we’re going through, what it’s like to be a college student.”