Pacific Index

Eighth Annual Pacific University Instant Theatre Festival

On Saturday, September 14, at six thirty, the eighth annual Instant Theatre Festival unveiled its four productions. For the previous 24 hours, students had constructed a narrative from scratch. 

The timing of the showings placed the theatrical sport in direct competition with the first home football game of the year; even so, a solid crowd of 60 arrived for the splash-dash that is “instant theater.”

It has been described as speed dating for theater. 

Twenty-four before showcasing their new theatrical work, student playwrights were given a prompt to produce a 10-minute play. In turn, they were given overnight to pen a play—and, in the morning, directors took over and coached actors.

“Instant Theatre Festival (ITF) is a great way to get to know the Pacific theater community and gain theater experience along the way,” explained Emily Smith, Pacific University ‘22, who organized this year’s event. 

One of those involved this year was senior Troy Pigman, who played the lowly bureaucrat Death #69 in the play, Night of the Living Girlfriend: U-Hauling a Lesbian Out of Her Grave. “At kickoff the writers were given their prompts and all through the night they wrote their plays. They then handed them in in the morning. The actors and directors were shuffled up and were given seven hours to prepare. I’d say that exhaustion is an understatement.”

In spite of the mad dash, Pigman was enthused. “To be honest, I feel pretty good. I’m really not nervous, which is surprising. I did everything that I had to do to prepare. Actually, now I’m thinking about a career change from a writer to a thespian.”

In the program, his character is merely labeled 69 Death, and upon questioning of what was up with his character, he said: “So in the play, Death is an organization like the Parking Authority or the IRS. It would be unrealistic to just have one Grim Reaper collecting souls for the entire world, so instead there’s an entire agency all serving the long arm of death. I am an aging, lower-level bureaucrat who is just trying to collect the (titular) lesbian’s soul, but over the course of the play I become very disillusioned with my state in life.” 

In the play, in between monologues where metaphysics are thrown around with cheap jokes about bureaucracy, 69 Death becomes embroiled in a Mexican stand-off between a graverobber and the dead lesbian’s girlfriend. 

“I had a lot of fun preparing for this and I hope that the audience enjoys watching it as much as I enjoyed practicing,” Pigman adds, just before taking stage.

Other plays touched were similarly layered and creative: Pigeon Lake, written by current Pacific student Wren Bonham, reimagined Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, with a mixture of Cinderella for good measure; and current student Cryptid Parke’s The Dreamer mimicked one’s interior dream consciousness after one too many TikTok binges; a wacky band-kid-esque detective story of a duo of hapless investigators on the trail of a howling apparition reigning terror on a python farm. Chase scenes, cheeky one liners, chain bubble blowing, dance renditions. It was a great night.