By Nia Mwangi, staff
• Stunt Night Slideshow on Instagram
There are many events during Homecoming Week and one event that students look forward to is Stunt Night. Stunt Night is a competitive theatrical performance from each of the four classes, each class is tasked to create a skit from the theme chosen by the Stunt Night Committee and perform in front of students and alumni during Homecoming Week.
The cast performed at 7pm. on Oct. 10 and 11 at Walton Chapel. The committee chose the theme “Remember When…” to reminisce about UMHB’s past. They wanted to switch things around, and had the freshman, sophomore, junior and senior class directors draw from a hat to determine which era they would get instead of the eras being assigned. The freshmen drew the 80s, the sophomores drew the 2000s, the juniors drew the 70s, and the seniors drew the 90s.
Freshman directors, Jen Trull, a Transformational Development major, and Isabella Lily, a Film Studies major, worked on the script together.
Their fellow castmates suggested many funny jokes, dialogue, and crucial plot points that Trull and Lily incorporated into the final script. The freshman started having their weekly meetings on Sept. 3, which lasted from 6 - 7 pm.
The first few meetings consisted of explaining more about Stunt Night, and on Sept. 17, they had their first read through. “I thought we definitely came up with such a good concept for the skit,” Studio Art major Sarah Estrada said. “Stunt Night was definitely something I wanted to do because I always wanted to participate in dancing or even acting.”
The directors started to have their meetings on Wednesdays and Tuesdays starting on the following day. About a week later on Sept. 24, they finalized the cast list and started to work on blocking and choreography.
During Homecoming Week, the class worked hard to wrap everything up. The student directors purchased the costumes and started to run everything on stage.
“Tuesday (Oct. 7) was that step of moving it to the stage in Walton Chapel and getting to watch the other classes perform,” Business Administration major Lauren Luckey said. “It was pretty cool. We didn't have a ton of props that we needed, but a lot of our time was spent on blocking, figuring out where people needed to be on each side of the stage, and what we needed to make the show run smoothly.”
In the end, the sophomores won Stunt Night. However, the freshman class won two individual awards. Judah Hartnagle,a Music major, won an award for being the most Christ-like on and off stage and Eli Palmer, majoring in Transformational Development, got an award for being the best actor. “I was honored to win best actor,” Palmer said. “I was not expecting it at all. There were so many great actors performing in Stunt Night this year, so I was humbled to find out that I was even on the same level as them. Stunt Night was an experience of a lifetime that I will cherish forever, and I couldn’t have asked to share it with a better cast.”
