This Thing of Darkness

A couple of weeks ago as we wrapped up our Spring Break visit to various colleges, we ended up in Harrisonburg to see Rachel in a show. This wasn't your run-of-the-mill stage show, but a student-created theater "experience" for her experimental theater class, called "This Thing of Darkness".

Typically, I would avoid this kind of thing like the plague, but you know, Rachel.

And I found it a great deal of fun. The first show saw the biggest attendance so there were a lot of people having fun, which elevated the experience. We started out in a big classroom which represented a ship. As we stood around, all the actors swayed to indicate ship motion and engaged people in small talk. Suddenly, there was an emergency and we all headed to the lifeboats in three pre-determined groups.

Once in our smaller group, we were lead to other rooms throughout the building for more theatrical scenarios intended to represent the island on which we were stranded. We had to deal with one of the actors bursting into tears, a quasi-religious experience, a charming shadow puppet story, and even a full fledged tribal council from Survivor. Near the end, Rachel played a corpse for a bit, and we were given terrible tasting punch at a party. And we all learned something about ourselves. :-)

It was a fun, unusual experience and I'm really glad we went. The students did a great job.

Many students made their own unique posters
advertising the show. This is Rachel's.