Pointless College StoriesII: Fish Becomes a Ham
While plenty stories remain to be told about college, it is becoming more and more difficult to bring them up without first broaching the topic of No Refund Theatre. It has certainly been mentioned in passing enough that it warrants its own attention. So here we go.
It was the spring semester of my first year that the main campus so that would probably be 1993, if the noggin is recollecting correctly. By that point, I was hanging out at Atherton pretty regularly even though I was far removed from the Scholars Program. Anyway, there was a group there called The Atherton Players who put on a play every year and this time around they had chosen "The Crucible".
Since I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with theater at McKeesport, I figured I would go to auditions and see what happened. When I didn't get cast, sure I was disappointed, but I shrugged it off and figured I would fill my time some other way. About a week or two later, I was chatting with Skippy. He'd auditioned as well and didn't get cast but he said that he had been talking with a few of his friends and they made the decision that they were going to do a play anyway.
I asked what they planned on putting on and he said there was a play adaptation of Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles." Intrigued, I auditioned for it and got a couple of parts. This was because that since we weren't an established organization and it was done completely out of the blue anyway, that there weren't more than a dozen of us to fill the many roles needed to cast it fully. It didn't matter to me. In fact, I think I preferred it because we all seemed to be the guys who appreciated theater, but not necessarily the guys who where going to make it our living.
So, over the next couple of months we rehearsed and gathered props to use. Since we didn't have a budget, we had to be inventive on how to give our props that Martian feel. Skippy's guiding factor was that when in doubt, spraypaint it silver (It's a motif!). We also conscripted the help from Rick to fashion a bunch of paper-maché masks for us to wear for when we were playing Martians. In fact, I still have that mask prominently displayed at my house.
Eventually we put on a few performances at the HUB auditorium. I remember grabbing Squid to help us to run the light board. It was a really good time and though the show wasn't what you would consider a high-production endeavor, we all put a lot of work into it. And after we were done, we immediately started talking about the next play we'd like to put on.
We dubbed ourselves No Refund Theatre shortly thereafter. Over time our numbers grew which allowed us to do more projects over the course of a semester so much so that we became a fixture at Forum Building (our new stage area of choice) on any given weekend. Not only that, but it also became an outlet for folks who wanted to have a hand in any aspect of the process, including playwrighting.
I think we managed to be successful because we kept from formalizing into student organization. We were unfettered by formal budgets, bylaws and officers. We didn't care if your major was theater or not. If you had a project and there was an available weekend, you just nab it and get the ball rolling. Sure there were clashes of ego, but what group doesn't have that? At the end of the day, we were all working toward the same goal and were happy to lend a hand to others in order to achieve it.
From what I understand No Refund Theatre still exists. Part of me feels a sense of pride in helping to found an enduring institution at Penn State. Granted, they've since emerged from the underground to become a formal student organization, but I can sense that they are remaining faithful to the principles of amateur theater we tried to uphold. Pity they got the history all wrong and called Skippy by the wrong name, but I suppose history is meant to be imprecise.
It was the spring semester of my first year that the main campus so that would probably be 1993, if the noggin is recollecting correctly. By that point, I was hanging out at Atherton pretty regularly even though I was far removed from the Scholars Program. Anyway, there was a group there called The Atherton Players who put on a play every year and this time around they had chosen "The Crucible".
Since I thoroughly enjoyed my experience with theater at McKeesport, I figured I would go to auditions and see what happened. When I didn't get cast, sure I was disappointed, but I shrugged it off and figured I would fill my time some other way. About a week or two later, I was chatting with Skippy. He'd auditioned as well and didn't get cast but he said that he had been talking with a few of his friends and they made the decision that they were going to do a play anyway.
I asked what they planned on putting on and he said there was a play adaptation of Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles." Intrigued, I auditioned for it and got a couple of parts. This was because that since we weren't an established organization and it was done completely out of the blue anyway, that there weren't more than a dozen of us to fill the many roles needed to cast it fully. It didn't matter to me. In fact, I think I preferred it because we all seemed to be the guys who appreciated theater, but not necessarily the guys who where going to make it our living.
So, over the next couple of months we rehearsed and gathered props to use. Since we didn't have a budget, we had to be inventive on how to give our props that Martian feel. Skippy's guiding factor was that when in doubt, spraypaint it silver (It's a motif!). We also conscripted the help from Rick to fashion a bunch of paper-maché masks for us to wear for when we were playing Martians. In fact, I still have that mask prominently displayed at my house.
Eventually we put on a few performances at the HUB auditorium. I remember grabbing Squid to help us to run the light board. It was a really good time and though the show wasn't what you would consider a high-production endeavor, we all put a lot of work into it. And after we were done, we immediately started talking about the next play we'd like to put on.
We dubbed ourselves No Refund Theatre shortly thereafter. Over time our numbers grew which allowed us to do more projects over the course of a semester so much so that we became a fixture at Forum Building (our new stage area of choice) on any given weekend. Not only that, but it also became an outlet for folks who wanted to have a hand in any aspect of the process, including playwrighting.
I think we managed to be successful because we kept from formalizing into student organization. We were unfettered by formal budgets, bylaws and officers. We didn't care if your major was theater or not. If you had a project and there was an available weekend, you just nab it and get the ball rolling. Sure there were clashes of ego, but what group doesn't have that? At the end of the day, we were all working toward the same goal and were happy to lend a hand to others in order to achieve it.
From what I understand No Refund Theatre still exists. Part of me feels a sense of pride in helping to found an enduring institution at Penn State. Granted, they've since emerged from the underground to become a formal student organization, but I can sense that they are remaining faithful to the principles of amateur theater we tried to uphold. Pity they got the history all wrong and called Skippy by the wrong name, but I suppose history is meant to be imprecise.