September has rolled around once again, which means Short Form season at UWCSEA Dover! Short Form is an annual production of mini-plays, each entirely student-produced, written, directed, and performed. These creative displays are often no more than fifteen minutes long, but when this time of year comes around, they sure get the High School buzzing.
Short Form 2022 saw eight chamber pieces, each with their own flavour. “Bunda Burglars” revels in pure scandalous humour, building up to not just one, but two impressive plot twists in its short timespan. It also makes excellent use of projection and lighting as production elements. “Ghosted” and “The Therapy Session” both pull off engaging performances with an extremely condensed cast of three actors; in fact, “Ghosted” only has three people in its entire team, as two actors also dub as directors and writers. So, it is even more impressive to watch as it accomplishes with almost professional ease tricky elements such as characterisation, staging, and even a little bit of world-building. Similarly, by triumphing in writing hilariously Breakfast Club-esque characters, “The Speedo Swindler” creatively weaves its entire premise around the disappearance of a pair of speedos, all the while poking fun at Dover’s senior tradition of the graduation trip to Koh Samui. Actors really get to shine in “Dinner with the Roberts”, an outrageously funny story that charms the audience into trying to catch every ingenious little detail happening on stage.
As a constant reviewer of Theatre at UWCSEA, Short Form to me is distinguished from other plays by the freedom it provides students, something that shines through the performance easily. It allows us to make a parody of our own experiences as UWC-ers, to satirise and to dramatise our at times challenging lives, to recognise through laughter that we are not in this alone. References to the infamous TOK course, the various IAs piling up, and the casual but much welcomed breaking of the fourth wall as the community on either side of the stage lights sees one another, this is what brings Short Form life.
While Short Form may not be the most polished production, trust that no one would give up its rough edges brimming with student energy—least of all those involved. I asked this year’s cast how they would describe their Short Form experience with one word. “Community”, “connection”, “rewarding”, “worthwhile”, “sentimental”, “nostalgic”, or simply “wonderful”—these are but a few of many responses. Summer, a director, situated Short Form positively as “a great way to start the new year”. Clemy, a G12 getting involved for the first time, says that “Even though I was only in Short Form once, I felt emotional when we ended and will really miss it when I graduate… the friends you make really stick.” This feeling is shared by Short Form veterans. Leon, who has been involved as an actor for three years, wrote and directed his own play for the first time this year. He says the experience has been “awesome”, and that “continuing the community and the traditions which shape Short Form was really special. I hope future years get to experience all the joy that I have.”
As I close, allow me a final, and perhaps irrelevant, observation. Funnily enough, there seemed to be certain themes which resounded throughout this year’s Short Form plays, even though they were not intentionally related: therapy, life after death, and dysfunctional relationship dynamics. Am I overstating Short Form by putting forward the thesis that it can serve as a reflection of undercurrents running through the collective High School psyche? That we accept these less glorious parts of life as its constant dynamics, bolstered by love and community, as they are in our own lives? Perhaps. But the answer will really be for you to find out, when next September rolls around.
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