Alumni Profile

Collide of the Sides

Golds, Purples present joint College Night show

BY HARRISON NEVILLE ’22, PHOTOS BY MICHAEL WADE

For this year’s College Night production, “Collide of the Sides: Royal and Loyal,” the Purple and Gold sides united to create a story that visited potential scripts of the past and told the story of a student who wanted to join a side but was undecided.

The two sides rehearsed in small groups during the months leading up to College Night and aired a recording of the show to a virtual audience on the night of Saturday, March 13.

The production opened with a musical number portraying a College Night mixer with the rivalry between the veteran Purple and Gold main characters, Peter and Gabby.

After the mixer, Peter and Gabby discussed an upcoming class assignment with freshman Victoria. The assignment was to write a College Night script.

Peter had access to past College Night scripts, so they looked at them for inspiration. The first was a Gold Side show about Shakespeare characters.

The scene featured Romeo, Macbeth and Hamlet mourning the deaths of their lovers. Lamenting their grief, the characters sang a solemn tune titled “Shakespeare.” Afterward, the characters learned all three lovers are alive.

The next script was a Purple Side script featuring a group of women working in a U.S. factory during World War II who were planning to unionize due to sexual harassment by their boss.

Victoria and Peter enjoyed the script, but Gabby was dissatisfied. Peter picked another Purple Side script, this one featuring a girl who sells her soul to a demon to get the attention of a boy. All three were disturbed by this script.

The next script featured a witch singing “Violet’s Magic” with her magic mirror. The witch, named Violet, talked about her evil deeds while Maggie, the mirror, complained about being dragged along.

Victoria said she wanted the script to have more depth, so they moved on to another script featuring a dramatic gangster-style story. Gabby and Peter started bickering after reading the script, but Victoria interrupted and directed them toward another script titled “Country Strong,” which featured a small-town get-together with two characters on a first date.

The next script showed two best friends, one of whom accidentally killed the other with a bad drink. The friend became a ghost and met the Grim Reaper.

Gabby didn’t like this script and said, “Who wants to read a script about a bunch of dead people?”

This enraged Peter, and he accused Gabby of not liking it because it was written by Purples. The two then decided they would rather fail the assignment than work together.

Before they stormed off, Victoria told them to stop and said, “I thought by doing this assignment together, I could get to know more about each side and find my place at Montevallo. But the way you are behaving, I don’t know if I even want to play College Night.”

Both Gabby and Peter were ashamed and apologized to Victoria.

Having calmed down, they looked at the script for “Disco Sucks,” which featured two gay men who united to save a disco club. All of them felt this was closer to the type of show they wanted.

The final script they looked at was “Utopia,” featuring an underwater city and a girl whose heart was broken by her best friend. This script helped Gabby, Peter and Victoria solidify the ideas they had, and they agreed to meet the next day to finish.

Victoria thanked Gabby and Peter for spending time with her, saying, “I know that whichever side I choose, I’ll have a great friend there to show me around.”

The three students left, and the closing number played.