by Akira Sumpter

Clipper Productions, Patterson’s drama club, performed a brand new play on November 20–a dystopian story titled “In Darkness, Audio Flowers Bloom” written by Alvaro Saar Rios. Since the script had just been published, cast members had to brainstorm creative ways to draw emotion from the text with little to no visual examples of how the play is supposed to be presented. The actors quickly embraced their characters and prepared for opening night.

The play was performed on Thursday, November 20th with an encore performance the following night. The first performance seemed like it went by slightly faster than the Friday show, which was for the parents, staff and family members.

This is only one of the many challenges our amazing crew members had to endure during the production of this play in a short two months. Everyone in the packed auditorium who watched this play enjoyed every second of escaping into a new world. The audience also liked the authenticity the story displayed. 

At times the audience found the plot a little hard to follow, due to some actors who could not make it to the performance, forcing the rest of the cast to improvise. “The storyline was interesting but oftentimes i was confused as to which character was which”, commented alumnus actor Jabari Heartly. Overall, though, most audience members appreciated the meaning of the story–that oftentimes your fears are your worst enemy.

There were mysterious characters named Silencers, who “silenced” the characters by keeping them frozen whenever one entered the stage coming from the depths of darkest corners. Characters weren’t allowed to make sounds, express themselves or create music with any so called “instruments”, and if they were caught doing so they were sent to some place called the “O Pits”.

The resolution of this story ended with a character sharing some top secret dance moves they learned from being sent to the “O Pits” and with combined vocals they created music together. Everyone was happily being themselves without living in fear of being killed, threatened or imprisoned.

This play was impressively put together without much information and time and yet was still a success. In the Spring semester, the Arts department will perform a musical aiming to wow the audience.