A Night at the Profession

Friday October 11 was a rainy and dreary night, so what else to do but go and see The Profession?  I walked through the rain to the Experimental Theater while I filled with excitement.  I didn’t know anything about the show other than the fact that it was an absurdist piece about a dystopia.

I entered the Experimental Theater and saw two actors, one a large man on stilts standing between two large tables and a small woman sitting at one of the two large tables.  Although I knew these actors from theater club their creepy character presence made me uncomfortable.  These actors remained on stage, silently interacting with each other.  The actors sat there for a while.  Then the lights went out and a voice dominated the theater.  The voice welcomed us to the theater, reminded us to silence our phones, and then encouraged us to enjoy the show.

The lights came up and we were in the same classroom setting as the stage was set before.  The large man on stilts was saying names of the digestive tract parts.  The students sitting in their oversized desks repeated the names that he said to them.  The female character had no issue repeating these names but the male character struggled and the man noticed.  The man on stilts boomed at him, “Eugene!  Stand up!”  The man, who we now know as Eugene, stood in front of his desk as the teacher from The Profession pointed to a small piece of the lower intestines and asked Eugene what it was, but Eugene had no idea.  The teacher was angry and told Eugene that he would never make it in The Profession, unless he threw himself into the fire.  Eugene and Rosetta, the female student, were put through many other tests until Eugene was told to have sex with Rosetta.  Eugene was married that morning, and he refused to break his vows so quickly.  Eugene fled The Profession and returned home to his apartment and his wife Ibid.  Ibid was played by the same actress who played Rosetta.  Ibid drilled Eugene with questions about his day at work and Eugene skirted around the fact that The Profession wanted him to have sex with his classmate.  Ibid claimed to have read the handbook that Eugene never saw and said she knew about this unpleasant task.  When Eugene told her that he refused to do the task Ibid was angry she told him that he would go back and do the task.  Then there was a ten-minute intermission.

After the intermission we were back in the classroom Eugene and Rosetta stood in front of their desks both reacting differently to the sex they had during intermission.  Rosetta was numb and Eugene was giddy as a schoolboy.  While Rosetta was disgusted by the sex and frozen, Eugene questioned Schaffer, the teacher of The Profession, about the person in charge of The Profession.  These questions made Schaffer uncomfortable, and he finally broke and gave Eugene a simple hint as to who controlled The Profession.  Schaffer handed Eugene an orange.  This orange was a great clue.  After Rosetta unfroze she told Eugene that maybe the orange has something to do with a fruit fly.  This was the correct answer; the ruler was the fruit flies, apparently.  Eugene was a threat to The Profession now, so Schaffer told Rosetta to castrate Eugene.

Eugene runs and leaves the theater.  He flees to the nearby park, where bad things are said to happen.  At the park Eugene meets a vagrant.  The vagrant seems crazy but safe so Eugene asks if he can join him living the vagrant life in the park.  The vagrant convinces Eugene out of all of his clothes except his underwear. There is a noise in the distance and Ibid arrives in the park.  Ibid discusses how she is happy with their life and wants Eugene back.  She begs Eugene to return, and after a while Eugene agrees to leave with her, when the vagrant rips off Ibid’s wig.  Rosetta was wearing a wig the whole time, fooling Eugene.  Then Rosetta tells Eugene of how he is a clown and is only meant to please the fruit flies.  Then the vagrant reveals that he is the teacher, Schaffer.  These two characters argue and laugh at Eugene.  Eventually, Schaffer leaves and Eugene kills Rosetta with the orange.  Once Eugene realizes what he has done he begs for forgiveness and says he will live his life by the handbook.  Fireworks go off and Schaffer returned, rewarded Eugene a promotion for killing Rosetta.  Then Eugene gives in to the life he was being offered in The Profession.

The whole play, The Profession, was trying to show that in a perfect world the higher power will always succeed, and that there is no escape from any of the higher powers.

September 23, 2013: Whose Line?

On Monday September 23, 2013 the Stockton Theatre Club hosted a free show based off of the TV show Whose Line is it Anyway?  This new adaptation of the popular TV show was amazing.  The show started off with a handful of the on-stage actors getting up and preforming a pantomime slideshow for an imaginary trip to the Niagara Falls. Two other actors narrated what was happening in the scene.  One actress named Kate was described as the one who goes over the falls and dies. She remained in the show, but the “death” stuck around as a running joke throughout the show.  This was followed by a game called The Alphabet Game.  In this game, two actors, Dan and Kate, are given a scenario of how the first time they meet. The scenario they were given involved them getting lost in a corn maze.  Alternating lines, Dan and Kate had a conversation. However, the catch was that each line had to start with the letters of the alphabet in order.  Once the dialogue got to the letter “Z” the game was over and the team moved on to Space Jump.  In Space Jump, two actors start on stage. New actors enter and the scene changes until every actor who is participating is on stage. Then they begin leaving making the actors go backwards through scenes until the original two actors remain on stage.  This game had the actors start out wrestling an alligator, to celebrating Thanksgiving, to talking again about poor Kate’s death at Niagara Falls.  Then the party began!  Seriously, the next game was called Party Quirks. There was a host for an imaginary party and three guests.  These guests were given quirks that the host did not know.  Once the party began the guests were not permitted to leave until the host discovered their quirks.  One girl had to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” while another danced to “Oppa Gangnam Style” whenever the host looked at her, and the final guest had to pretend he was turning into a werewolf.  This game is always a hilarious one to watch.  Party Quirks was followed by the Rhyming Game.  In this game, three audience members are selected and set in a line of the actors.  Two at a time, those on center stage have a conversation where the lines must rhyme. If the lines didn’t rhyme, the person who failed to rhyme went to the back of the line.  Next were monologues, in this game a panel of actors are on the stage and an event is selected.  The selected event was Black Friday at Walmart.  Then with this information each actor picks a character and scenario they will monologue about.  In this scenario a poor little girl was trampled while looking at a 12-inch TV she longed to buy while a hobo took the TV.  The Dating Game was the next endeavor for the actors to experience.  One man, Josh leaves the room while three girls are the potential dates for him, but they are given famous personas.  One girl was Fat Amy, one was Luke Skywalker, and the third was the Tooth Fairy. Josh had to ask a few questions in the dating game until he could guess whom the three contestants were.  The final game was Survivor.  This game holds true to the game of survivor. A scenario is set, like this one where the actors were stranded on a desert island.  After the scene was enacted, the weakest actor was voted off and the whole scene was repeated with that actor now missing.  This continued until only one actor remained. Taylor was left alone to act the part that seven other actors had not been able to do.  She yelled at herself and fought with herself.  At one point she even became some sort of animal and chased herself.  This show was very entertaining and full of laughs.  The humor throughout the show was consistent.  I cannot wait for the next Whose Line put on by the Stockton Theatre Club!

A Visit to Eastern State Penitentiary

Eastern State Penitentiary is a huge tourist attraction with a lot of history to it and the Honors Program had the privilege of going on a day trip to Eastern State.  The group arrived in front of the arts and science building in the morning and once roll was taken, the bus departed and we were on our way.

The charter bus pulled up in front of the enormous stone building and I was overwhelmed by the size and architecture of the prison.  Single file we exited the bus and stood in front of the giant castle-like structure.  Finally we were told to split into two groups.  My group was the second to enter the Penitentiary, and our tour guide opened the monstrous gate and led us to a small garden in the front courtyard of the prison.  Here she explained how the prison ran on a separate system in which all the inmates were kept in their own cells and how they did not interact with other inmates.  She elaborated on the difference between a prison and a penitentiary.  She informed us that a penitentiary was based on the religious idea of repenting for ones sins.  Thus, the separate system in which they could reflect on their sins.  As we continued our tour we stopped at a corner.  This corner was where the tour guide explained the radial design of the prison and how from this point there was no blind spot.  This penitentiary was very extravagant for its time; it had heat and running water, which drew people into the prison just for meals and ammenities.  As we continued our tour we entered different cells and saw how tiny they were.  We entered the surveillance hub and saw how effective the radial design was for security.  We went outside and saw the exercise yard and heard about how the inmates would hit baseballs over the wall and the baseballs came back over the wall altered and filled with drugs.  We also saw the guard towers on the corners of the wall because the radial system became obsolete as the prison expanded and got larger within its walls. We were then showed death row and then set free to go explore the prison and get lunch somewhere in the town.

A few of my friends and I traveled the prison saw the second floor cells, and even went into the hole.  We saw the creepy set up for “Terror Behind the Walls” and then decided we had seen enough.  We left the prison turned right and walked down the street until we stumbled upon a small pizza place.  This pizza place was called Luigi’s, and it was such a great cheesesteak.  I ate a chicken cheesesteak that was amazing and Italian soda.  After lunch we wandered around and found a used bookstore that we entered.  We then got ice cream and returned to Eastern State.  We took a group picture in front of Eastern State Penitentiary and then the bus arrived.  We boarded the bus and we departed and everyone took a nice nap after the long day trip we had just finished.