The student-directed Thursday Night Live came to the PAC fast and furious, leaving drama students, including Margo Turman, a co-host, only one week to prepare.

The satirical Thursday Night Live is put on annually by the drama department, and this year’s show was co-hosted by Turman, a senior.

Due the the time off from Hurricane Irma, Turman and her fellow actors and only a week to construct a loose script for the show.

“Usually we have two weeks to do it, but this year, we were cut short about a week due to the hurricane, which is amazing,” she said. “We have an amazing cast, and that is the only reason we were able to do that.”

The event was personal and intimate with all of the seating on the stage directly in front of the performance.  There was a combination of satire skits, improv and stand-up comedy.  There was also inclusion of crowd participation.

At one point in the show, a live hedgehog was brought onto the stage and climbed on a performer’s body.

Turman started her freshman year in Drama II by just helping out behind the scenes. She has contributed to TNL for all four years of high school.

“[Freshman year] was the first time I had ever seen TNL, and it was the funniest thing I’d seen in my life.  I knew right in that moment that I wanted to be in charge of TNL,” Turman said, “This year I was finally able to do that.”

Aspiring to obtain a career in technical theater, Turman works as a stage manager for most of her shows with the exception of TNL.

“I really enjoy being a part of something bigger.  The one little thing I do is going to make the show 10 times better… I was just a simple stage hand that pushed a prop on stage, and that was all I did. But that one thing alone made the whole show keep going,” Turman said. “Even the smallest part matters.”

Turman prefers satire and improv much more than other types of acting which is the reason for her dedication to TNL.

“I really like to use my own words, … and I’m really strong in my personality, so it’s, kind of, hard for me to conform into different characters,” Turman said. “It’s me writing my own material. It’s me being a funny goofball which I am anyways, so that’s what I particularly love about this.”

The show touched into a variety of subjects including music, politics, topics relevant to teenagers and fairytales.  All of these topics were picked by students and approved by the show director.

“We give students… a month’s notice when we start putting flyers out there and being like, ‘Yo, TNL’s coming. You can bring your own material, or if you don’t have something, come anyways; we’ll provide scripts… for you to read,’” Turman said.

The comedic show brought a lot of laughter out of the audience, despite technical difficulties towards the end of the show.  

“We got laughs, right? If we got laughs, I consider that as a success. If we made people smile and forget about life for a while then, yeah, it was a success,” Turman said.