Traditions typically come and go, and although Reed retains a culture of tradition, some things eventually fade away. In Renn Fayres past, students put a ‘Glow Opera,’ which was “a play we put on usually on the Saturday night of Renn Fayre in which there’s no lighting, and all of the characters, props, and settings are rendered by glow sticks attached to clothes or props,” said alumnus Greg Lam. He added that “It’s typically done in the Amphitheatre, and it’s usually packed. I have no idea what the actual head count is, but it’s the only thing scheduled at that time and a thing to see, and it seems like the entire school is there.”
Each Glow Opera had a theme. The year before Lam’s Glow Opera, the theme was “…a psychosexual and kind of raunchy, nasty Frank Zappa thing, which wasn’t helped by having [it] held in Vollum due to bad weather. Characters had glow sex with blow-up dolls and luggage while a driving beat played. I didn’t think it was possible, but Glow Opera was not fun that year.”
According to alum Jacqueline Pi, “The Renn Fayre [Czars] would take submissions for Glow Opera, and choose the one they liked— sometimes [there was] only one submission. It wasn’t necessarily on the RF theme, but if there [was] more than one submission, being on-theme certainly seemed to help your chances.”
As with other Renn Fayre events, Lam said, “we expect a significant amount of people at Renn Fayre to be… chemically enhanced; the Glow Opera theme and presentation is usually a bit trippy.”
Some past themes include Lam’s adaption of various Shel Silverstein poems and Pi’s adaption of Star Wars: A New Hope. Greg Lam said it was “one of my favorite things I’ve ever done.”
Given the nature of Star Wars, Pi thought it had tons of potential as a Glow Opera theme. Pi said they “saw opportunities for starship fire fights, laser beams, etc. through glow sticks.” Eventually, Pi said that “[the Glow Opera team had] put together such a detailed splice of the original movie…that it took a long while for the soundtrack to be finished; we were working off the paper script for the entire rehearsal time period. Our first full run-through with sound was our performance. Besides someone misplacing a spaceship for the opening scene, and deciding to use the Millennium Falcon instead, everything went surprisingly well!”
While the Glow Opera tradition seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent years, Reed traditions have always had a habit of disappearing and returning seemingly of their own accord. Who knows— maybe this year’s Wildwood extravaganza will find the amphitheater, once more, aglow.