The passengers coming off of Flight 500 are giddy and have seemingly no worries. Maybe that’s because in the play, “Three Ways to Thrill,” Flight 500 is known for its illicit in-flight bathroom activities. As the plane lands, the guests are greeted by a television reporter seeking answers as to why the flight is so popular. The satisfied participants proceeded to tell of the debauchery that takes place while on board.

“I wanted to write something ridiculous and not at all meaningful,” said SF State senior and student playwright Adela Ballester.

Ballester was one of seven student directors given three days to write, cast and direct a short play as a participant in “Shotgun,” a play writing challenge organized by SF State’s Players’ Club.

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The student-led organization has put on the event for the past three semesters, free of charge. This year, on Oct. 25, Ballester and others—who had previously signed up a month ago—pulled a prompt from a hat and were given a designated number of actors to work with.

The directors were given 24 hours to come up with a script. The next day, they met their actors for the first time to go over content and memorize lines. By 8 p.m. on Oct. 27, their hard work was showcased at the Studio Theatre in the Creative Arts building.

The intimate theater, which seats 85 people, was overflowing with students eager to see what the teams had come up with.

When Ballester pulled the prompt “an airplane bathroom,” she decided that she wanted to make the challenge “as fun as possible,” so she started researching outrageous airplane bathroom stories on the Internet.

“The search results gave me great ideas for turning the central theme into a wacky news report,” Ballester said.

Players’ Club Vice President and theatre major, Talia Derry, knows how stressful the “Shotgun” process can be. Derry has participated in “Shotgun” in previous semesters. During one performance, she had to deliver a 15-minute monologue, which she said was terrifying, but ultimately satisfying.

However, the players are encouraged to have fun with the process and not to take it too seriously.

“A lot of students get [interested in] the theater department by doing this,” she said. “There’s this improvisation and it’s so spontaneous. You really have to have an imagination to think something up on the spot.”

This is Ballester’s third time being a part of the event but she still gets excited each time the event comes around. She said she thinks putting together a play in three days can really show a person’s commitment to theater.

“It’s amazing how people can memorize 10 minutes worth of dialogue, devote an entire day to…memorization and character development and pull off reasonably good theater,” she said. “I’ve often found some ‘Shotgun’ shows to be smarter, better acted and more entertaining than some main stage shows I’ve seen.”

Jared Petersen, SF State senior, was a first-time player this year. He joined “Shotgun” to have a good time and to have the experience of writing on deadline.

“I also wanted to [partake in the event] to help me have a drive to produce new work,” said Petersen, who is a double major in Play Development and Creative Writing.

Petersen’s prompt was “gates of heaven” and was given five actors to work with. Since he was unsure of how many would be male or female, he wrote 12 pages of script on Thursday night with only two of the five roles gender-specific.

“We still ended up using a guy to play the grandma,” Petersen said. “In a situation like this you work with what you have.”

Petersen’s play, entitled “Gates of Heaven,” displays a wide variety of characters. An elderly couple, a dried up river, a mosquito and a young girl find themselves in a mysterious place, surrounded by gates, wondering how they got there. They soon realize they are dead, but uncertain as to whether they are at the gates of heaven or hell.
Petersen says he would definitely do “Shotgun” again, except maybe he wouldn’t write such a long play.

“Because we don’t know the actors we are getting, you have a higher likelihood of having the actors memorize their lines with a shorter script,” he said. “But we were having fun, and that’s what it was all about.”

Derry is encouraged by the audience turnout, which she said gets a little fuller each time Players Club has done “Shotgun.”

“This is great way for people to get to know the department better,” she says. “Plus, the people who do it feel really accomplished afterwards.”