The student run showcase was a hit with the audience as all types of Eastern performers came out to shine on stage.
The Panther Performance Festival, previously known as Up All Night, is an annual student run showcase. The festival was open to acts made up by Eastern students of all majors. The event is put on by the EIU Theater department in under two days.
The festival, taking place in Doudna Fine Arts Center’s Globe Studio on Saturday night from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., was free for the public.
Over 30 student performers appeared on stage. They performed a plethora of acts that consisted of singing, dancing, poetry, monologues and comedic skits. All performances were created and planned out over a 30-hour period.
One of the four artistic directors for the event Marie Mullinax a junior musical theater major, worked as the main tech runner for the night.
“It was a fun challenge,” said Mullinax. “It was definitely exciting because at Eastern we get to do a lot of behind the scene working shows, but to be able to run a complete show is an entirely different thing.”
Mullinax also performed the song “Uninvited” as a duet with Emerson Gausmann, a senior vocal performance major. The two have not often gotten the chance to perform together, but thanks to the festival, they got that chance.
“I had this duet from a musical that I just really enjoyed, and I was like I just really want to do it with someone, and then I was like Panther Performance Fest,” said Gausmann. “This was my first year doing this and as a Senior graduating in May, I wish I would have done this event sooner.”
Although the Globe Studio is a smaller performance venue every seat was packed for the show. Around a quarter of the way through the show more chairs had to be brought in due to the amount of people who wanted to watch the performance.
A big hoot from the night came from the multiple comedic performances. One of which was a parody sketch of the SNL sketch weekend update. Instead of covering national headlines as jokes Megan Fox, freshman theater major, and Abby Smith, freshman theater minor, decided to spin the sketch to talk about news happening at EIU.
Fox and Smith discussed multiple topics from frat bros to football. They hosted a segment talking about the things people have been posting on Yikyak, like “Has anyone seen the Bat flying around on Doudna?”
They also poked fun at everyone who has recently been using the community Snapchat stories to advertise their YouTube channels.
Another performance was a sketch entitled “The Music Man Abridged.”
“We went upstairs, and we all started talking discussing ideas, and somehow it came up that all three of us had been in a prediction for the Music Man in high school,” said Ethan Vice, a freshman theatre major.
Thus, the idea was born to write a skit walking through each of the biggest moments from the musical.
Laughs filled the room as the skit began.
Vice, along with Mitch Cox and Patience Beever, performed their comedic scene with fast paced transitions. Cox played the director, leading us the viewer through the performance. Just when Beever and Vice began a musical number there was Cox jumping in and yelling out “Moving on!”
Everyone showcased finished the night with a final bow met by a round of applause from the audience.
Gunnar Olson can be reached at 581-2812 or at gwolson2@eiu.edu.
