Things had been going so well in VIC235, a quaint seminar course for students in the Creative Expression & Society minor. Internet connection was smooth, discussion was interesting, and the class was wrapping up at the delightfully early time of 1:56pm. But as the professor posed the rhetorical question looking for any final thoughts or questions, hopes of an early dismissal were quickly jeopardized––third-year English student Ellis Conrad had something to share.
“Ellis unmuted himself,” said a weary classmate, who has requested to remain anonymous. Ellis had alluded earlier in the class to “this thing he’d been working on,” but weaved it in somewhat smoothly with the main discussion. Several classmates gulped nervously. “I thought maybe that was it, that we’d never hear about it again,” grumbled his peer.
“They’re gonna love this,” said Ellis when asked to comment. “It’s sort of like drama meets tragedy meets sci-fi, all in a single three-hour musical. The entire thing takes place during one day of a fictitious pandemic, and the main character dies five minutes in. Fucking goosebumps, right?”
Ellis is not yet sure whether to perform the twelve-paragraph soliloquy which uses cutlery as a metaphor for mental health, or the dream sequence in which God gives a detailed summary of World War I. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that this class will not be dismissed by 2:00 pm.
Photo Credit: Patrick Fraser