What Happen When Opening Night

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What Happens When is a play, but not just any play, it is an important performance put on by a Wheaton College that is sponsored in part by a grant awarded by the Office of Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. What Happens When addresses the problem with sexual encounters across college campus, and the dialogue surrounding them. As college students, and just human beings in general, this performance was very important and eye opening
to attend. Although one may think that this performance does not necessarily correlate to our religion class, but I beg to differ. As a strong believer that religion is deeply embedded into every aspect of life and society, this play is no exception. Throughout the play, there were underlying religious themes throughout. Whether it touched upon people believing that having sex was a sin or homophobia (which was not directly linked with religion, but left one to wonder). Many a time after a sexual assault, it leaves people very angry, especially it can at a higher power, and they can have their faith shaken, and feel as if they have nothing left, this was not discussed in the performance, but the raw emotion of the main character made you create a back story to her grieving and wonder more about her. This is an ode to how well our fellow peers did at acting out these very tough roles.
Another way that this play was connected to our class at this time is that is very much had to do with the sense of sight. With two large projectors, there was videography displayed throughout the play on large screens. It was footage of our classmates talking about sexual encounters. Or it was chilling footage of the cast, or stars, or children, set in just perfectly to capture the audience and set a mood. There were also chilling facts about sexual misconduct displayed upon the screens that shocked everyone and multimedia clips, such as texts and tweets, making everything seem much more real when it was displayed on screen. The way the cast and crew really incorporated sight into this play was great and added a sensual dimension to the viewing experience. It felt like an added bonus for the audience to be more engaged and relate more to us. When the actors were not specifically looking at us, the statistics and video footage were staring right back at us.

Overall What Happens When is a very important performance to be seen by not just the Wheaton community, but campuses everywhere. Call to reserve your tickets to the play at the Weber Theatre, in the Watson Fine Arts building, 8:00 p.m. (4/12 & 4/19—2:00 p.m.)

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