By: Derek Hottenstein
Someone once said that college is a place for expressing yourself. Finding who you are and doing what you love is what college, especially the experience here at St. Norbert, is all about. And few groups have that down to a science quite as much as Knight Theater, Creative Writing Club, and the SNC Honors Program. This semester, they all joined forces to create an experience that won’t be soon forgotten. Towards the beginning of this year, an idea was sparked to reignite theater here at the college by letting students take the reins. Creative Writing Club had the writers to create plays, and Knight Theater had the actors to perform them. And this simple equation later led to a multi-month-long process of writing, casting, rehearsing, and eventually performing, all accomplished by the passionate and driven student body of SNC.
With over thirty students involved in the project, ranging from actors to directors to lighting/costume/sound crews, there was a lot of energy to funnel into it. Each performance, which we referred to as the “Full House of Plays,” stood as a final result of five short plays right after each other, each lasting 10-30 minutes. That’s a total of three nights and fifteen separate performances split across the weekend of May 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Sounds daunting? Not for the students involved, who are some of the best and brightest that SNC has to offer, both within the Honors Program and outside of it.
Dominick Azzolina, a current sophomore and Honors student, wrote and directed his short play Superhero Man as a parody of classic superhero movies and had this to say about the process: “A little over a year ago, Derek took me to auditions for Wonderland, a play here written and directed by Dr. Stephen Rupsch. I quickly came to love acting and, more importantly, the students invested in it. Now I’m directing my first-ever play with a cast of my own. I’m truly grateful for this opportunity and to the people involved, and I look forward to whatever the future holds.”
And for those of us who instead used this opportunity to take a bow on a long, illustrious career here at SNC and Honors, it’s been just as rewarding. Jackie Stumpf, a current senior here (soon to be graduate), is the director and co-writer of the play Circus Court (also a cast member in one of the other plays, Detective’s Worst Knightmare). Here’s her perspective: “I’ve been really enjoying the freedom I have with directing this project. It’s been really amazing to see how the actors are willing to add their own spin on certain things in my script, or give their own ideas about sound cues and bits we should add. It really has been such a collaborative effort, and I’m happy to see everyone willing to work together to bring the show I wrote to life. ”
So as the curtain fell on the project that we’ve spent so long building into something truly special, it was both a sense of pride and new beginnings. For some of us, it’s the start of many more years of student-created wonder to present onstage. For others, a bittersweet goodbye as school comes to a close, and we all go our separate ways. But whatever life holds in store for Knight Theater, Creative Writing Club, and the Honors Program (and all the students who call them home), this has been an experience that will remain with us for a very long time.
