Owl and Nightingale Players Host Annual Indie Fest
Jordan Knox ’21 (center), Thea Toocheck ’21 (left), and Lauren Heyer (right) perform “The Dreamers’ Monologues” at Indie Fest 2018 (Photo Gauri Mangala/The Gettysburgian)
By Gauri Mangala, Co-Features Editor
The Owl and Nightingale Players hosted its annual independent play festival, “Indie Fest,” this past weekend, with three days of student written, produced, and performed plays.
Friday consisted of a modified performance of the final project of Susan Russell’s FYS 180-2: Dreaming in Color: Multicultural Theatre in the U.S., student written monologues written in response to Jose Rivera’s “Sonnets for an Old Century, “Kyle!,” a short play written by Mairead Kress ’18 and Isaac Briggs ’20, and “Cliche P.I.”, an annual performance, this year surrounding the casts’ extremely loose adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time.”
The original creator of Cliché P.I., John Rudy ‘07 was in attendance.
Saturday continued with a staged reading of a original play by Mairead Kress ’18 entitled “Cicada Summer,” selected scenes from “Jaws”, and the annual Bad Play competition. This year’s competition received four entries, “The Cloakroom” by Abby Pope ’20, “The Devil is My Friend and I Think I’m in Love with Him” by Nikoleta Mountanos ’19, “The Peculiar Interests of Scary Spice” by Caitlin Boyle ’18, and “Sometimes, There is No Silver Lining” by Brody Tennant ’21. After all plays were performed, the audience anonymously voted for their favorite and Nikoleta Mountanos was crowned the ‘Worst Playwright’ of 2018’s Indie Fest.
“I’d like to thank the Theatre Department, for helping me get here,” stated Mountanos. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”
Sunday concluded Indie Fest with “The Play About the Parade,” an original play by Nikoleta Mountanos ’19, readings from “Your Mother’s Butt”, and “little gods,” an original play by Madison Cramer ’19.
“When you set down your conception in words on a page, it’s exciting and promising, but it really becomes something new when you get other people breathing life into it,” remarked Cramer. “Lines that just moved the play forward were suddenly so genuine and intense and the performance itself continued that momentum and brought it to such an unbelievable conclusion. I’m beyond delighted that I had the opportunity to work the whole thing out with my friends and have something very real to show for it.”
Later this month, the theatre department will present “A Map of Virtue” directed by guest director Tara Ahmadinejad on April 19-23, “Gypsy” directed by Nikoleta Mountanos ’19 on May 3-5, and “Fefu and Her Friends” directed by Mairead Kress ’18 on May 4-5.
