Marissa Maharaj/The Falcon (Left to right:) Senior Joshua Wood, sophomore James Osborn and junior Alysha Curry in the Student Directed One Act Play “Curtains.”

The stage is set: the Studio Theatre inside lower McKinley Hall. The audience sits only a few feet away on all four sides of the actors. The curtain opens for the first of two shows. Sixty minutes are given for one student to complete a life-altering test. In the next show, the theater has been murdered and a theater reviewer is charged with the killing.

These are the SPU Student Directed One Act Plays.

"This is a Test," the first play, is directed by senior Ryan Putnam.

The story follows student Alan Lefenfield, played by freshman Nate Corley and a cast of nine other actors, as he takes a nightmarish test.

The play is set in a high school classroom. It opens with Alan telling the girl next to him how he studied all night, just as she had suggested, but he only learned two things: Thomas Edison's middle name is Alva and the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066.

But Thomas Edison's middle name isn't going to be on the test and the multiple choice answers for the Battle of Hastings only list 1065 and 1067 as options.

It only gets worse from there.

His fellow students are blatantly cheating in many different ways. The teacher, played by freshman Paul Adolphsen, doesn't notice as he sits behind his newspaper.

The true or false questions aren't true or false questions. After all, how can he explain the nature of the universe in a true or false question? The opinion essay is in Chinese, and Alan doesn't know Chinese. (The class learned Chinese on Tuesday when he had his dental appointment).

Melissa Maharaj/The Falcon Freshman Nate Corley, playing student Alan Lefenfield, raises his hand during the one act play “This is a Test.”

The clock keeps ticking.

"It's just a quirky version of every student's nightmare while taking a test," freshman Emily Feliciano, a cast member in the show, said.

Stephen Bauman directs "Curtains," the second play, in what he calls "the pinnacle of my college career." It follows Ron, a theater reviewer, played by senior Joshua Wood, who is charged with murdering the theater.

It opens as Ron enters his apartment. His wife Marcia, played by junior Alysha Curry, is waiting. Ron is obviously distraught. He tells her that someone is dead.

"Who's dead?" she asks.

Ron stutters that the theater is dead.

They are soon joined by Ron's friend Jim, a tough lawyer with a kind streak, played by sophomore James Osborn.

They watch a news bulletin on the death of the theater and find, to their horror, that Ron is charged with the murder. Tensions rise as the trio attempts to prove Ron's innocence.

"The way the characters interact with each other" was something that drew Bauman to the show, he said. "Ron and Marcia relate in a different way than Ron and Jim relate.... [It] forms great three-dimensional characters."

For example, Curry said she watched the MTV special "True Life: I'm a Staten Island Girl" for inspiration. She described the girls in the special as snobs, but really sweet with their friends. Her character was sweet with her husband but a snob with Jim. In the play, Marcia yells at Jim one second and turns to Ron with her "I'm-your-adoring-wife" voice the next.

These two different comedies came to the stage through the same process. At the end of last year, students applied to be chosen as directors for this year's One Act Plays. Each applicant suggested three options for shows they would like to direct.

It took a lot of work reading and analyzing the plays before submitting them, Bauman said.

One of Putnam's submissions, "This is a Test," was chosen by the Theatre Department faculty.

"Out of all the One Acts I read... it was the funniest one to me," Putnam said. "People at SPU would be able to understand it and enjoy it as well."

"Curtains" was Bauman's third choice. "That makes it a challenge," he said. It was hard to ignore his other two choices and put everything he had into "Curtains," he said.

That is not to say that Bauman didn't like the play. He said he especially liked the interactions between the characters.

The directors had their scripts; next they needed a cast. Auditions for the One Acts as well as the upcoming Spring Mainstage Production "You Can't Take it With You," were held at the beginning of winter quarter. Students who auditioned prepared solo monologues. There were also group callbacks, Feliciano said.

Actors in both One Acts talked of the smoothness of the process and praised their directors.

"Our director Ryan was awesome," Corley said. "It's a test-imony to his abilities as an ar-test."

Osborn, the only actor who appears in both shows in person, said "they're both so funny.... I love comedy and these two shows are [some] of the funniest that SPU Theatre's going to do this year."

The One Act Plays began showing yesterday and run through Saturday. Shows start at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $6 and are available at the box office in McKinley Hall. To reserve tickets, contact the box office at 206-281-2959. More information is available at http://spu.edu/boxoffice.