On September 6, “Citations Needed,” a play co-written by Daniel Lanigan O’Hara and Tanner Hudson, was read by MUN Drama at the LSPU Hall as part of St. John’s Shorts’ Short Play Festival.
Daniel Lanigan O’Hara is an Undergraduate student at Memorial completing a double major in English and Communication, as well as a Diploma in Stage and Screen Technique.
When describing the premise of the play, O’Hara says, “It’s about a student studying in the university cafe, like Jumping Bean; that’s what I think of because that’s where I study all the time. I can’t handle study rooms and the silence, I have to be in a public area where things are happening. But when you’re in a public area, people feel no qualms at all about just coming up to and talking to you for two hours.”
He continues, explaining, “The idea was to take that little bit of frustration about things that happened to me. So, the whole short is this guy studying, trying to get his assignment done at the last half an hour before the deadline, and all he has left to do is his citations. It’s the last, most boring and tedious part of the essay,” says O’Hara, “and every five seconds, somebody’s coming up and taking his attention away. He’s just trying to shove everyone away, but it just keeps getting weirder and weirder until there’s this whole storyline going on completely outside of him, including weird conspiracies, and he’s just like, can everybody leave me alone, please?”
Initially, O’Hara had submitted the play himself to the festival and was not accepted. It was then that he decided to approach MUN Drama, a student group that he is a member of. MUN Drama had been accepted into the festival for the opening night of the Public Play Readings and had yet to decide what they would be performing. O’Hara suggested they perform a reading of “Citations Needed,” and they agreed.
He explains, “Initially, I was like, okay yeah, I didn’t get in, I’ll take the loss on that one and hope for next year, but nobody else had any ideas that would involve as many people— I just happened to have something.”
While being involved in the festival in any capacity is exciting, O’Hara explains that he hopes, eventually, to see the play put off as a full-fledged performance.
“It is kind of sad that we got a reading and not one of the actual slots because what I ended up writing I’m really proud of,” he explains. “It’s so animated, there’s going to be so many characters running across the stage in an actual do of it, but this is just going to be a reading. We’ve talked about the idea of actually putting it off. I do believe there’s like a 90% chance that we’ll put it on again.”
The St. John’s Short Play Festival will continue until September 17th, with numerous short plays being performed on Thursday through the weekend.
O’Hara says that the festival is different than most in that it accepts application entries from anyone and everyone.
“A lot of festivals, usually, you have to have some kind of prestige first in order to get in,” explains O’Hara, “This is like, it doesn’t matter if you’ve just arrived in the country and no one knows who you are and you have no idea who you are or if you’re Terra Bruce, a big company, you have the same chances.”
“They give a little bit of leeway to indigenous writers, and there are a few different lottery pools for stuff like that. Even the people who are on the board doing everything, their plays might not get selected. They keep really true to it; it’s really cool. That’s why it’s built so much mystique and respect in the arts community; I think the entire play world stops for a second when the Shorts are going on, at least around here.”
The Short Play Festival will continue this week from September 14th-17th. To check out the performance schedule or buy tickets, visit their website: http://www.shortplaystjohns.ca/
If you’re interested in joining MUN Drama, you can reach out to the society through one of the following:
Email: hrstack@mun.ca
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mundramasociety/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mundramasociety/