(THE PICKET)—On Oct. 23, Shepherd University’s Rude Mechanicals put on a play called “The Disappearance of Ruby Young” in Reynolds Hall.
The play was about a young girl on a social media site who ends up disappearing, causing the friends she met on this site to go looking for her. On this journey, they uncover many scandals and, at the end, they do solve the disappearance of Ruby Young.
The actors played their characters well, drawing the audience into the twisted plot line with their well-worded dialogue. They even interacted with the audience, asking us if we’ve “seen Ruby anywhere?” when they were trying to figure out where this mysterious girl went.
It was shocking because many plays have a wall up where the audience is a spectator and nothing else. However, when the cast of “The Disappearance of Ruby Young” interacted with us, they broke down that wall and pulled us farther into their world.
There weren’t many props used because a lot of the dialogue happened on a social media site, but they did project these posts up onto a screen so that the audience would be able to read along, in case they couldn’t hear or because they wanted to make sure they understood what was being said.
The cast wore clothing based on what their characters were doing when they uploaded their posts. So one character was dressed in casual wear while another was in pajamas. This was a reality check because we don’t really think about it; when most people upload posts to websites they don’t care about what they’re wearing, so this play showed what we, as people, do in real life.
As a whole, this play did an excellent job of showing just what social media is like in this day and age. It also showed how some people can misuse social media for their own gain.
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