Last night saw DU Players resume their weekly Wednesday night events with the “One Act Comedy Hour”. The premise was simple – to write a short comedic scene within the space of an hour. However, the delightful and chaotic hilarity that ensued surpassed all expectations.
The event took place on Zoom which, alongside Discord, has become the main location for many of DU Players’ events since March. After some initial small talk, the group of around 35 people was broken up into seven smaller breakout rooms, each consisting of a committee member and a member of the Ents sub-committee. Following some ice-breakers, each group began writing a script, with only a scenario and character prompt.
After the hour, the groups reassembled and each performed their scene. The result was seven hilarious short plays, packed with a host of wacky characters and creative settings. From the Titanic to Victorian London to the office of the Academic Registry, each scene was full of surprises.
The shows embraced all elements of theatre design. Impromptu costumes were assembled, with Twilight’s Renesmee Cullen appearing on screen complete with fake blood on her chin. A variety of different props were also used, including phones, puppets, wands, a ukulele strummed by a makeshift Hozier, and drags were taken from pencils as cigars.
One group, who presented a Zoom call between medicine students that were haunted by the ghost of Samuel Beckett, made clever use of lighting design by having the performers’ screens flicker in and out of darkness throughout. Sound also played a prominent role in many of the plays, with live singing, waiting room jazz and blasts of the Pussycat Dolls. Zoom backgrounds naturally provided opportunity for virtual set design, evoking a variety of locations.
The final products were a testament to the creativity and spontaneity of everyone involved. Participants voted for their favourite and despite an improvisation tie-breaker, two teams emerged as joint victors. The two winning plays will be recorded and uploaded to the Players Youtube channel.
Despite Zoom’s tendency towards awkward silences, with only one person talking at a time, DU Players Ents Officer Antonia Ní Bhrádaigh ensured last night’s event optimised the format. By using breakout rooms, she provided a more intimate setting, giving members a chance to get to know each other and collaborate.
Despite its limitations, Ní Bhrádaigh is also keen to embrace the positive aspects of the platform. “One unsung blessing of virtual events is the lack of curfew. Under normal circumstances we would have been locking the building and heading to catch the bus at 10.30pm or 11.00pm at night, but now students are happily sitting on Zoom till the AM getting to know each other and it’s lovely to see!”
For DU Players Chairperson Ultan Pringle, the event was “a gorgeous culmination of six months of hard graft trying to understand what works virtually and what doesn’t”. It also gave him great hope for the society’s immediate future: “With current restrictions holding for now, it was exciting last night to see that we can still push what we do virtually for an event in new and intriguing ways and we look forward to continuing to do that over the coming year!”
Now that so much of our daily lives occurs on Zoom, it can be difficult for societies to entice people back to their screens at the end of the day. The level of the commitment shown by performers in the “One Act Comedy Hour” was a testament to the welcoming atmosphere DU Players created this freshers week. Without a hint of shyness, freshers donned costumes, put on accents and threw themselves into the experience without any trepidation. This event saw members of DU Players do what they love best: to create, to perform and have a lot of fun.
