“Come on, feel the burn!” When one hears these words, he or she usually shudders at the thought of a painful hour on an elliptical. However, for the members of Colgate’s Masque and Triangle Theater Group, these words have a completely different connotation. While writers usually spend years writing scripts and actors spend months rehearsing, this Colgate group and its volunteers did all of this in just 24 hours. The 24 Hour Burn is when a show is written, directed and acted in 24 hours. It was a true show of talent. The writers met at 8:00 p.m. this past Fri-day night to begin writing their sketches. They continued writ-ing throughout the night and finally finished a full 12 hours later. Scenes were then passed on to the directors and actors. The shows were rehearsed for another 12 hours on Saturday, at which point the performances finally went up.

Senior Halley Goldman and sophomore Lillian Laiks orga-nized the Burn, which this semester consisted of four sketches. The first was en-titled “The Cookie Conun-drum by Classy Klutz,” writ-ten by sophomore Michelle Cohen and directed by first-year Lindsay Kahlbaugh. The sketch focused on a clumsy office worker, Carrie, played by sophomore Elyse McGrath whose secret iden-tity is a superhero. When a mysterious cookie is left on Carrie’s desk, she embraces her superpowers to solve this cookie conundrum. Carrie’s coworkers, Rachel, played by first-year Charlotte Ar-bogast, and Leah, played by first-year Lillian Pentecost, are quite put out by Carrie’s antics. Rachel, who is diligently working on her final thesis for her Ph.D., attempts to quiet down Carrie with stern glances and snippy lectures. Yet, Leah finds sympathy for Carrie and instead attempts to placate her and gently tell her to continue with her work. Eventually, af-ter a clumsy tumble, Carrie finds a note, which had fallen off of the mysterious cookie. It had been a gift from an admirer, Cookie Kid.

“Resonating Indecision,” by junior Mary Rose Devine, followed. Susan, played by first-year Allison Spanyer, has a serious problem. She is accompanied by her friend, played by senior Nadya Green-berg, who is plagued with the fate of having to patiently listen to her friend’s rambling. Suddenly a witch appears, played by first-year Jane Ives. The witch promises to solve Susan’s problem and traps them all in a bubble. While trapped, the witch and Susan’s friend get into an argument on which reigns in problem solving: logical thinking or feelings and emotions. After a riveting discussion, it is finally decided that both play an important part in decision-making, and Susan must first understand her problem before she can solve it. The witch then disappears and the two friends are left alone once again. However, the entire scenario had only happened in Susan’s head.

The next play, “Jug Life,” was a satire spun off of usual hap-penings at the Jug. It was both written and directed by junior Eric Bryden, who also played the character of Ben. Junior Elena Kalmus joined him on the stage as Sarah. The comedic pair, be-fore heading out to the Jug for the night, relived some prior Jug adventures. This included stories about one of their friends having to chase a girl up a tree and proceeding to serenade her. Ben spends time describing the type of girl he’d be looking for at the Jug that night: mysterious and intriguing. He decides to put it all into one word, and he spells out “S-P-E-C-I-A-L.” In retaliation, Sarah jokes that Ben spelled the word “E-A-S-Y” incorrectly. They went over everything, from pickup lines to dance moves. This dynamic duo explored the hysterical happenings of a night at the Jug, and the sketch ended with them heading down to the local hotspot to play out the night.

The 24 Hour Burn then closed with senior Pat Gillick’s “The Cookie Joke,” directed by junior Jessica Hall. Sopho-more Dan Kwartler played the nervous Dan who proposes to his cool, calm and collected girlfriend, Mary, played by first-year Alanna Ticali. She says that she needs time to think over her boyfriend’s proposal because she believes that neither are ready for commitment, and she escapes to the bathroom. Mary comes back in a panic, explaining to the waitress, played by junior Kara Schmidt, that she had accidentally dropped her engagement ring down the drain of the sink. The waitress laughs this off, explaining that it happens so many times that they have a personal plumber that fixes this usual occurrence. Mary is ushered back from the table, the waitress having promised to occupy Dan’s thoughts so that he does not pester Mary about the engagement. The waitress uses a joke to stall about a cookie gone rogue. A man had been driving along the coastline when he heard a ruckus in his trunk. Upon opening it, he found the cookie running around, screaming, “I’m a cook-ie, look at me!” The driver, hav-ing come across this many times throughout the trip, sternly told the cookie to get back into the basket. Finally, fed up with the obnoxious cookie, the driver threw it into the ocean. When their meals arrive, the couples dig in, happy to have gotten away from the waitress’s joke. As Mary is eating her fish, she lets out a shriek and pulls out the rogue cookie. The sketch ends with the cookie crying out, “I’m free!”

The Hamilton Center for the Arts was packed Saturday night, and rightly so, as so much effort went into these four plays. These hardworking and brilliant stu-dents really portrayed just how creative and talented they really are. Each of the writers, directors and actors put in their all during the prescribed 24 hours, and they pulled everything off wonderfully.

Contact Elizabeth Marino at [email protected].