March 29, 2024

SWCC Drama Club presents ‘After the Party’

Southwestern Community College Drama Club will perform “After the Party” at 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at the Performing Arts Center.

“After the Party” is a one act play written by SWCC English professor Kelly Franklin about the aftermath of an office holiday party gone awry.

“I’ve always wanted to work with the idea of a Christmas party or a holiday party and I’ve heard lots of horror stories. I’ve never been to one that’s gone wrong, but how fun would it be to write about one?” said Franklin. “I wrote about an office. The stage is split, and one side is the morning after the party. The boss comes in, it’s in disarray and he wants to know what happened, and then one by one, the workers tell their side of the story. The other side of the stage becomes the night before, so the actors have to flip sides of the stage all the time, and it’s just really, really funny, some of the stuff that happened.”

The SWCC fall production is typically a series of 10-minute skits written by students and the community. For the production this year, the decision was made to perform only a single one act because over the past several years, only a small number of skits had been submitted and Franklin, English instructor Stephen Jefferies and a handful of students have written the majority of the skits.

Franklin thought that by doing a single one act performance, it would give people time work on and submit skits for next year.

“After the Party” features the talents of Stephen Jefferies, Clint Williams, David Qualseth, Rebecca Coleman, Maisy Franklin, Patrick Groves, Kapri Wilmoth, Lorilei Herrod and Sydney Stock. Jefferies is also co-directing the play with Franklin.

“Steven typically directs, but I felt like this was my baby, and I didn’t want to hand it off, which has been nice because we’ve been able to tag team.” Franklin said. “Typically, he directs all of the 10-minute plays, which is a very stressful fall for him, so this has ended up being much easier, much more relaxed.”

Bring a canned good or non-perishable item for free admission.

“We’re sticking to the same trend we’ve always had,” said Franklin. “You come, you donate a non-perishable food item, and then we donate those, first to students in need, and then to the local food pantry. The first year we were going to do it, we were going to take them straight to the food pantry, and then I realized that there were a lot of students that were running out of money on their caf-cards (cafeteria cards) and really needed the assistance.”

“After the Party” contains adult humor and language and is not recommended for children.