With the closing of Bellarmine’s production of Urinetown, another show is on the come up – Bellarmine Theater’s Dramafest.
This production will be the third iteration of Dramafest at Bellarmine – it was first conceptualized by Remi Bakoul and Gwen Hobson in 2024, and since then has become an exciting and creative opportunity for participants and a unique watch for those who attend.
Dramafest consists of student written, directed, and produced one – act plays. While it is performed on the same stage, Dramafest and the average fall play or spring musical are in reality drastically different – but how?
For starters, each play is fully originally conceptualized and written by a student at Bellarmine (two seniors and two juniors), so what the audience will see on the stage has never been seen before by a crowd. The show is also completely casted and acted by students. In a lot of ways, this is a huge opportunity for the students that participate – it allows them to stretch themselves creatively and learn how to both direct their peers or learn to take direction from anybody – even somebody their same age.
However, it also creates limitations. Because there are limited adults on staff, the set must be able to be pulled from preexisting resources, or students must be willing to create the set on their own time. The lighting and sound are limited as well – the timing and number of students participating makes it much harder to choreograph complicated light work, and specifically this year, there are hardly any students volunteering to participate in sound.
So while the Musical and Dramafest are both creative outlets able to be seen on the stage, they differ in production value and origins.
The first edition of Dramafest presented just two shows, but this year’s production features four plays – each of which is spotlighted below!
“The Waiting Room” by Lian Katterhagen: “The Waiting Room” follows nine characters stuck in the waiting room who are waiting to be seen – if they ever will be. They bicker and bond until they ring a bell and the narrator gets involved and reveals what they are really doing there. It deals with the characters examining their life in unexpected ways and realizing what the definition of a good person is, and who gets to decide.
“What Did He Say?” by Vala Borgelt: What Did He Say? follows Lia, a 17-year-old caught between cultures, and her mother Maria, a Filipino immigrant who depends on her to navigate life. As Lia translates the world for her mother, she begins to filter and reshape the truth, creating distance between them. Through memories and everyday moments, the play explores identity, sacrifice, and the emotional burden of being someone’s voice.
“Edifice” by Ione Sim: Do you live in a cave? Plato wondered this 2,400 years ago in his famous Allegory of the Cave. The “Cave” is a metaphor which here refers to the idea of having a limited perception of reality fueled by ignorance. Edifice brings the allegory of the cave into a new setting.
“LIGHTS UP” by Isa Quesada: “LIGHTS UP” follows six characters in a power outage – two best friends who lost contact, two high schoolers from opposing sides of the social ladder, and two celebrity wannabes – all are keeping something from the other. When each pair stumbles into a situation of forced proximity, their unresolved conflict comes to light, and the questions are posed:
Will we only tell the truth when the lights are out?
And what do we do when they come back up?
Dramafest has one show on Thursday, April 30, at 7 p.m. Admission is free and donations are encouraged – go support the creative process and arts at Bellarmine.
