January 27, 2012
LIFE & ARTS
9
Theater fans create a play in a day
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The Dorothy Young Center for the Arts (DoYo) will hold the Plays in Progress (PiP) 24 Hour Play Blitz today Lina Estrada Staff Writer assion is the fuel that propels us to achieve our greatest desires, and opportunities are the doors through which we can reach our goals. Combined with creativity and patience, all of these attributes can produce things such as great scripts for movies, ideas for novels and dialogues for plays. And if there’s anyone who tries to convince you that these are easy tasks, just walk past them and remember that. Anyone who has ever had an interest in play writing, acting or directing will be given a chance to prove themselves this
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weekend at Drew’s fourth annual 24-Hour Play Blitz. The Play Blitz is an event that has been held in the Dorothy Young Center for the Arts (DoYo) by Drew’s Plays in Process (PiP), which gives student playwrights the opportunity to showcase their work before the Drew community. This Friday the countdown begins and after 24 hours exactly, passionate students will be able to unveil their work before a live audience. Here’s how the process works: tomorrow, participants will be split into groups. Each group will have one playwright, one director and several actors. Playwrights will have until 10 a.m. on Saturday to write a one-act play. Directors and actors will then have nine
hours to rehearse the play. The resulting performances will take place on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the DoYo. The general rules of the event are as follows: There will be one line of dialogue that must be in the play. Every group will have the same line, and it must be included in the final copy of the play. Next, there will be one prop that must be used in the play. The prop will be different for every group. The last rule and probably the easiest one to enforce is to be creative. The members of the team and some participants have shared their opinions on the 24-Hour Play Blitz. “I think it’s a great opportunity for people to sit down and write a play, especially if they don’t
have time,” Emilyn Bona (’13) PiP Producer, said of the PiP team. “The good thing about it being 24 hours is there’s always time for revisions. You have the freedom to revise at your leisure so it won’t be so stressful,” she said. “All I’m expecting is for people to show up, for people to get ideas.” “Also adding rules to the program gives people creativity so it’ll be good for them,” Duncan Lyle (’13) PiP Producer, said. “24 hours sounds crazy, but it’s been done before. We like this time because it doesn’t soak up too much of people’s time. It’s pretty fair,” he said. “I am expecting this to be a bit chaotic, but there will be lots of variety, excitement and not too stressful. It’ll be fun.”
Students are most passionate about piracy The mass protest against SOPA via statuses and tweets was the first time that I had seen the majority of my “friends” agree on an issue.
Victoria Mulligan
The Dish Sure with the recent elections for the Republican nomination, my News Feed has become a little bit more cognizant about the world at large rather than selfreferential, but SOPA was a different story altogether. Since talks of the Republican nominees and their stances have contributed to a polarization of opinions, it was amazing to witness the unifying effect that SOPA had on Facebook. I was proud of my social networking family. Not only was everyone in accordance, but it was also the most politically vocal I have ever seen my News Feed get. As a person that finds it necessary to see Ryan Gosling’s face in the not-yet released “Drive” before I go to sleep, I signed the petition against SOPA for all the wrong reasons. My friends urged me to sign this petition and some even went as far to change their profile picture to a censored sign. I was all for it, even choosing to ignore such mistakes as a status having the wrong form of “their” in it, if only to be more supportive of the cause. As I scrolled through Facebook, though, I could not help but contemplate why SOPA had been the defining point for political activism on my News Feed. What does our unification over SOPA, rather than over such acts as the NDAA, say about us? To clarify, SOPA is the acronym for Stop Online Piracy Act. SOPA’s original
Melissa Hoffman
intent was to bring an end to copyright infringement such as illegal downloads of movies, TV shows and music. According to CNN, “Both sides say they agree that protecting content is a worthy goal. But opponents say that the way SOPA is written effectively promotes censorship and is rife with the potential for unintended consequences.” SOPA’s vague language leaves room for interpretation about certain infringements, vagueness that could potentially allow the shutting down of an entire site for one viewer’s comment. As an internet generation, it’s easy to see why we would be so scared about SOPA. The act threatens the existence of sites such as Wikipedia and YouTube, sites that I, for one, have found a necessity for sanity in college—and don’t even get me started on that riveting blog you just began, you self-deprecating college student, you. While the efforts of the protest worked, and SOPA is now on pause, this leaves time to step back and ponder the important questions that SOPA instigates. Can an act truly stop piracy if it does not infringe on one person’s rights? If we’re so worried about human rights, why are we more worried about SOPA than other acts? These are just a couple of the questions that we will have to answer during the recent pause of SOPA. It is clear that the fine line between piracy and censorship will become one of the biggest topics for our generation to answer. SOPA, or an act like it, will still be a pressing issue until these answers are determined. Until then, I can sleep comfortably with Ryan Gosling’s illegally downloaded face staring right back at me.