The cast and crew of Too Much Light Makes a Baby Go Blind at Mount Saint Mary College, left to right front row: Alexander Florez ’15; Santina Peghi of Staten Island, N.Y.; Jennifer Bready, professor of Mathematics at the Mount; Hannah Caron of Bristol, Conn.; and Kylie Dragonetti of Massapequa, N.Y. Back row: Olivia Lotito of Monroe, N.Y.; Kaelyn Donoghue of Brick, N.J.; Thaddeus Jones of Beacon, N.Y.; Todd Weaver ’22; Bob Hauk of Pennsburg, Pa.; and Eliza Benfer ’19.
Performing 30 plays in 60 minutes?
That’s the challenge for the 10-person cast of Too Much Light Makes a Baby Go Blind at Mount Saint Mary College on Thursday, November 9, through Saturday, November 11.
The performances, one per night, will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Aquinas Hall Theatre, 330 Powell Ave., Newburgh, N.Y. Admission is $5, or free with a Mount ID. Tickets are limited. For reservations, call the box office at 845-569-3273.
Too Much Light Makes a Baby Go Blind is a rapid-fire comedy that relies on chance and audience participation as key elements. Instead of going in order, each play is selected at random and the cast must adapt on the fly.
“Hopefully it feels like, for the audience, anything can happen tonight,” said James Phillips, associate professor of Theatre. “Having the clock – that pressure just makes the whole evening more fun. The cast, the audience, everybody’s going to see that clock and know exactly where we are and exactly when we’re out of time.”
With such a strict time limit, every second counts. It’s up to the cast to make up for lost time however they can without compromising the quality of their performances. And there’s also the audience to contend with.
“It’s in the middle ground of what you might think of as a play and what you might think of as an improv show,” said Phillips. “There’s a lot of audience interaction, and whenever you have audience interaction, it makes it unpredictable. It’s going to change from night to night.”