H arding University Campus Players created and participated in a 24-hour writing project that started the night of Friday, Nov.9, 2018, and ended with performances the following night. Over the course of 24 hours, students wrote, cast, directed and performed five different shore plays. The show served as a fundraiser for Campus Players so that they could continue donating the proceeds from future shows to organizations like PATH, an international, nonprofit global health organization, and the unshine School. President of Harding University Campus Players and junior cheater major Sydney Sanford said she got the idea from some of her friends from home who had done a similar project with Alpha Psi Omega, a national cheater fraternity. Originally, the weekend had been blocked off for the club's performance of "The Giver," which was postponed until the spring semester. Sanford said she thought the project would be a fun and new activity for the theater department in addition to giving a unique opportunity to participants. "My first thing was: this doesn't have to be perfect," Sanford said. "Which is the perfect opportunity for someone to do it because it doesn't have to be something you've mulled [over] for 70 years, you know." Each student that participated played the role of either writer, director or actor. Two students were even given the opportunity to write and direct their own show. Freshman broadcast journalism major Todd Gray wrote and directed his play tided "The Worst Time for a Visit." Gray mentioned that writing was nothing new for him, but that this project provided him with new challenges. "This was my first time ever writing and completing a play," Gray said. "I usually just write short stories or books. Going into this you really had to focus on the dialogue aspect more than you did anything else, so that was a challenge, just making that natural. It was really weird directing it because I'm not used to seeing stuff that I write come to life." Senior theater major Jasmine Binford directed one of the shows tided "Rigid Romance." She said that one of the biggest things she took away from chis project was the amount of teamwork it took to make everything happen. Since she was directing a show that another student wrote, she communicated with him to ensure the show was performed how he envisioned, while also finding a way ·to convey his vision to the actors. "For me, the thing I love about directing is that if you do your job well, you don't get credit for it," Binford said. "After the show, I'm listening to the comments coming back to the actors, and they're like 'Oh, this was so cool.' 'Oh, you did this thing really well.' 'Oh my gosh, that was so funny, how did you stay still for that long?' And I was like, 'Those are all choices, and I made them.' I describe the second after they get on stage as being just like the proudest mom." story by Kayla Meeler 269 I DRAMA
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