It’s well known that teenagers have short attention spans. Albany High School’s Theater Ensemble exploits this in their new production, The Purple Clock. The Purple Clock is a series of 30 short skits that are to be performed in an hour or less, at the audience’s direction.
When the spectator is admitted into the Little Theater, he or she is handed a program with a list of skits, each with a number and name. The skits are all student written, so the authors’ names are written next to the skits. The show then opens with a pacing stage manager explaining the challenge: the stage crew has dared the actors to perform thirty skits in sixty minutes. The skits are chosen in random order, by the audience. As soon as one skit finishes, chaos, another trait teenagers are known for, ensues as a result of each member of the audience frantically yelling the number of the play they wish to see.
Most of the skits are comedic, a few are serious, but all of them are random. Instead of making viewers ponder the complex underlying theme of the objectification of women, this show is purely about having fun. A few of my favorites were “Dance Party,” “Move On Up,” and “Construction: The Musical.”
It’s clear from the actors’ performances that they all had immense amounts of fun putting on this show, which invites the audience to have fun right along with them. It is the most entertaining production I have seen in the Little Theater to date, and I hope that Theater Ensemble will consider making it a tradition.
The Purple Clock will be playing in the AHS Little Theater on Thursday, November 12, at seven p.m., and on Friday and Saturday, November 13 and 14, at eight p.m. Tickets are $5 for children, students, and seniors and $10 for adults.
