This week I had the unexpected delight of being invited to a rehearsal of one of my good friends’ girlfriend’s directing scenes. She is a Theater major and a Senior, so I believe she is required to direct a scene for her class.

It was a pretty cool opportunity, and I was glad for it because I had been working in the IC (Information Commons/Library) all day and needed a break. I was told that it would only last a half an hour, so it seemed like the perfect study break to me.

I went into the room and met with 2 other mutual friends (I myself had brought along my study partner of the day.) The director told us where to sit and spread us out around the actors as if we were in a thrust stage. The point was just that the actors needed to practice performing the scene in front of an audience, so our job was to just be a set of warm bodies to act towards.

The scene itself was pretty awesome. They ran through it once and I was really impressed by the power it packed in under 15 minutes. There was some really funny moments and some really deeply disturbing moments. The second time they ran through it I got even more out of it.

But to me the real value was getting to see this little subculture of Loyola’s Theater Major. So rarely do I realize how many other things are going on all the time. Had I not been invited to this exclusive viewing I wouldn’t have realized that all over the place in classrooms at night are small groups of students meeting to work on their scenes. This has been going on since my Freshman year and I had no idea. It makes me wonder what else is out there that I still haven’t heard of.