Ever wonder how Jumbo the elephant made it from the African plains to the top of the hill?
Bare Bodkin's 24-Hour Theatre Festival explored this and many other profound philosophical questions this Saturday, as three teams of Tufts thespians competed for the chance to take home really tacky prize jewelry and the glory of being named the best short-term theater writers, producers and actors on campus.
Beginning Friday night at 8 p.m., 13 students worked against the clock to devise original 22-minute plays. Each group was required to incorporate an action sequence, a musical number, and the opening line, "Oh Judy, where are my binoculars?" into their productions.
When the groups reconvened exactly 24 hours later at 8 p.m. Saturday night in Alumni Lounge, the results of their all-nighters were hilarious, heartwarming and occasionally homoerotic.
Appropriately dubbed Insert Here, the evening's first performance group examined the intense personal relationships between two romantic couples whose members suddenly decide to reevalute their sexual orientations. Senior Doug Foote and sophomore Corey Briskin opened the festival with a raunchy and risqu?© exchange of double entendres, while freshmen Luke Morris and Alisa Healy, their sexually frustrated next door neighbors, looked on with more than a hint of jealous longing.
Next up, The Rapscallions took the stage to dramatize the biography of Tufts' mascot, speculating that the reason Jumbo migrated across the Atlantic was to allow his homosexual and bestial love for P.T. Barnum to fully blossom. Junior Cassie Wallace and sophomore Danny Ferry portrayed the unlikely lovers with equal measures of tenderness and raw passion, while freshmen Adrian Williamson and George Kolev affected a myriad of different accents to portray various foreigners that either help or hurt the lovers in their quest to be together.
Finally, the team known as The Hot Seamen satirized their own creative process as they gave the audience an inside look at the trials and tribulations of competing in Bodkin's festival. Plagued with an inability to synthesize their various ridiculous ideas into a single story, the Seamen chose instead to be as ludicrous as possible, jumping from sophomores Joe Pikowski and Jenna Reece's poignant rendition of "Elephant Love Medley" to sophomore Philipp Andriopoulos' Austrian rap to freshman Joanna Hausmann's snarky commentary to sophomore Eric Nichols' Chuck Norris impression.
With all these silly scenarios and dirty jokes being bandied about, the festival's hosts, seniors Laura Willcox and Joel Perez, had plenty of material to play off of, and the audience alternated between nervous, blushing giggles and hearty guffaws.
Ultimately, however, the guest judges - grad student Helen Lewis, senior Sarah Rubin and sophomore Ned Berger - were forced to pick a winner. That honor went to The Rapscallions, with Insert Here and The Hot Seamen earning second- and third-place finishes, respectively.
"I think it [the festival] went great," said Bare Bodkin president and senior Elizabeth Harelik.
"We had a fabulous turnout, and all three skits went very well."
