Red, yellow or green? As members of the Samford and Birmingham community shuffled into Harrison Theatre over the weekend of March 15-18, they were asked to choose one of these colors and were given a corresponding wristband to wear for the show.
The Samford Theatre production of “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind” was an interactive play, and the colored wristbands each represented the level of interaction audience members were willing to participate in. Red wristbands involved the least amount of interaction from cast members, and green wristbands involved the most.
Audience members who chose green were willing to speak to cast or other audience members, be pulled up on stage to participate in the show or even be sprayed in the face with water.
Due to the inherent lack of predictability in an interactive show, audience and cast members alike had to be prepared for anything. Student director and senior acting and directing major Joshua Hery had to prepare his cast for any alternative.
“Directing an interactive show, you have to try to come up with every single possible scenario that somebody can do,” Hery said. “It’s kind of just trying to anticipate as much as you can because at the end of the day, you can’t anticipate everything but it’s trying to get the actors prepared enough that… they still have the confidence to know what they’re going to do and finish the show on time.”
The structure of the show added another layer of uncertainty to the cast members. It consisted of a 60-minute show, during which actors had to perform 30 separate scenes, all before the hour ran out. After each scene was over, audience members had to yell out a number between one and 30; whichever number the host of the show heard, the actors had to know and be ready to perform.
“We have a whole plan for what happens if they don’t finish on time,” Hery said. “We have a sound effect that plays, they immediately stop what they’re doing, everyone clears the stage – it’s a whole other scenario.”
Jackson Bradshaw, a junior theatre for youth major and cast member in the show, said that preparing for the show has not been entirely different from preparing for a traditional play structure.
“It’s a lot of fun but not that much different,” Bradshaw said. “I think the most fun part about the show has been incorporating in the audience as we go along, because when you’re performing to an empty theatre it’s like ‘Okay, is this gonna land?’ Then when the audience is actually there, it’s a lot of fun, especially when it’s people you know that are getting pulled up on stage or getting the water sprayed on them.”
Bradshaw enjoyed being in this show and seeing how the audience reacted to interaction with the cast.
“It was a lot of fun,” Bradshaw said. “I kind of feel like it’s a little prank on them for some of the scenes. I especially like the scene when Maddox pulls someone up onto stage and proposes to them.”
Mallory Hubbard, a sophomore costume design major and costume director for the show, had to make sure the cast members were dressed in a way that allowed for the unpredictable play structure. This is the second mainstage Samford production and first interactive show that Hubbard had been the costume designer for. Designing costumes for this show was different than designing for a normal production.
“For an interactive show definitely, it’s hard to predict anything or prepare especially well for certain parts of it because there’s an aspect that will always be unknown with the audience,” Hubbard said. “I think that’s a challenge, especially for the actors to have to figure out how to react or respond to every different kind of situation.”
Hery enjoyed directing an interactive show because it allowed the actors to make it their own.
“There are no characters or arcs we’re trying to create; we’re just trying to create these individual moments so it’s kind of like building this playground and then letting them figure out how they want to play on it,” Hery said. “It’s really fun to get to watch them. There are three or four scenes every night that I’ve given actors complete freedom to come up with whatever they want to that night. It’s kind of exciting just as a director to see what they come up with every night.”
Samford Theatre’s next upcoming show is “Tomorrow, the Island Dies,” which will take place April 11-14 in Harrison Theatre.
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