Acting

In a student skit entitled "There is no Problem that God Cannot Solve" a man beats his wife. The wife goes to a sorcerer who gives her powder to put in her husband's drink so that he will love her and not beat her. The husband sees her putting the powder in his drink, thinks it's poison and beats her some more. She then goes to a church minister who quotes what I think was the following from Ephisians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church..." Everyone then hugs. Husband stops beating wife. Problem solved.

The quick, unrealistic ending may be due to the short nature of student-produced English class skits - the play's gotta end at some point. Might as well be after reading from the bible. But interjecting slogans of human rights into the wrong contexts can be disturbing. If there is no problem that God can't solve, surely He solves it through human beings with more than biblical quotes alone. Not that the plays themselves seem disturbing while watching them - the creative entertainment of it all makes the whole plot run rather smoothly, and it's hard to realize the absurdity of it all while watching.

In one skit, a girl goes behind her parents back to see a boy. She gets pregnant at the end - expressed with what appear to be a few textbooks tucked underneath a bright African cloth wrap skirt. The audience is meant to learn a lesson about seeing boys behind one's parents' back. But before she gets pregnant she has this great scene where she takes out her heart-shaped red plastic makeup kit and nervously and excitedly puts on some bright eye shadow and foundation before sneaking through the backdoor. She runs off and her father runs into the empty room and has this quizzical, confused expression on his face at the site of the bright-pink eye shadow powder that was loosely fallen on the chair. He angrily brushes the powder off, looks around, and asks where the girl is, before the wife enters in her elaborate traditional East African mama outfit, turban and all, as nervous as her husband.

I am a bit tired of slogans, but the students jazz them up for really sophisticated scenes. They use the whole classroom, and the audience sits in a circle around the "stage" - the center of the classroom - with the actors facing different directions as they pace, speak, run around, pretend to beat wives, put on makeup, prepare meals with breakfast roles from the ASYV dining hall, and liven up the room so that you feel you are in the house with the characters.

The characters and setting are realistic. I just wish the outcome of the plots were, to.