The spotlights illuminate the black box theater at Avila University as junior Rin Cambell takes the stage. Ominous music hums through the speakers setting the audience on edge, all the while Cambell sets the scene of a run of the mill department story. Senior Suzanne Sade, playing a character shopping for a golden thimble, steps onto the elevator that transports her to the ninth floor, or as Cambell refers to it, the Twilight Zone.
The annual spring play was performed Friday April 12 through Sunday April 14. While normally the show alternates every other year between a contemporary play and a Shakespearean play, director Maggie Killian decided to switch it up with a showing of “The Twilight Zone.” Some may know the classic TV show of the same name that aired from Oct. 2, 1959, to June 19, 1964. Each episode was a standalone story where the character experienced unusual events referred to as the Twilight Zone with each episode ending in a surprising twist or moral.
“When The Twilight Zone was first announced as the play, I felt a little upset because I was hoping for a different one,” senior Caroline Hammett said. “However, after talking to Killian and seeing how excited she was, I began to get a bit more excited. I had never seen the Twilight Zone so I was super confused but auditioned anyway and I am so glad I did.”
The play featured five episodes allowing for versatility in storyline and casting. The first episode was “The After Hours,” starring Sade as a mannequin turned human for a month, the story started with her living her normal life and visiting the department store to buy a gift however after entering the Twilight Zone it was revealed she was in fact a mannequin that lived as a real human for a month until she needed to return to her rightful spot in the store.
Sade also played the feature role of the clown in the third episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.” In this episode five characters are trapped in a room with no way out and no memory of who they are, they only know that there is no exit and a bell dings every so often.
“It was a different experience than most Sion plays I’ve done just because the characters are so vastly different from each other,” Sade said. “And both are difficult to portray in their own ways. I really like the experience because it pushed me, but it was definitely challenging.”
The second episode opened with junior Elwyn Patterson sitting on a hospital bed with bandages covering her face. The doctors were trying to fix her however nothing was successful, they eventually removed her bandages to see if the treatments worked and it was revealed that she was not ugly as described but rather beautiful. Then the doctors and nurses turned around (after hiding their faces for the scene) and it was revealed that they were in fact the ugly ones. This story raises the point that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the beauty standard is nothing more than a societal idea.
“I think that this episode was a social commentary on societal beauty norms and standards and I think
that it is trying to convey that those ideals are stupid and beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, ” junior Kate Schneeberger said. “When we flip the script and have what is to them seen as ugly be our perception of beauty, it shows that this is a stupid concept to try and conform ourselves to become the societal standard of beauty.”
The fourth episode leaned more towards humor than morals as two park rangers tried to find a martian amongst six bus passengers who all ended up in a diner due to a storm. This comedic tale involves eccentric characters, hilarious sound effects and of course a plot twist. In the end the martian, played by sophomore Mo Symanski, revealed herself to the woman who worked at the diner, Hammett, but instead of a reacting with fear Hammett’s character simply took of her hat, revealed her third year and exposed herself as an alien from Venus leaving the martian and the audience shocked by the unexpected ending.
The fifth and final episode showcased an apocalyptic world where most everyone and everything had been destroyed by bombs and radiation. A colony of people survive by listening to the mysterious man in the cave. No one had seen the man in the cave but he always seemed to be right. The people were starving and along comes a man who persuades the people to revolt and ignore the man’s advice. All followed the new leader and eat food that the man told them to avoid, all except Mr. Goldsmith, played by Emmett Laubscher. The man in the cave is discovered to be a computer and everyone dies soon after, excluding Major French. This story brings up humanity’s lack of faith and how faithlessness led to loss of life.
“The Twilight Zone was kooky, creepy, and confusing but that is what made it so special,” Hammett said. “Sion hasn’t done many complex or eerie productions so this was something different and it turned out to be a hit and I am so proud of my work and everyone else’s.”
