House lights lower as a soft spot light appears at center stage, while a light melody floats through the room. In the audience, holding their breath wishing the performance a perfect execution, is the director. 

This Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. theater students are performing five one-act plays all directed by fellow students. Admission price for students and faculty will be $5.

“I think it challenges all of us to be better artist and better team players,” Jacob Turnbow theater junior said. “The Worker is an absurd play and the hardest part about that is that their reality is not our reality. The whole point of it is to shock people, and to see what can be taken from it.”

According to Autumn Dahl, theater junior, acting as a director is both new and exciting and has changed her occupational goals. Her one-act play “The M Word,” confronts societies issue of becoming a work-a-holic, through speech.

“I expected things to go a lot differently from what they did. I just viewed it as being crazy and whacky and it is, but in a different way,” Turnbow said. “The way I wanted it to go was the wrong direction.”

According to Rachel Innes, theater junior after picking a drama, casting, technical working and directing the play each director learns a lot about themselves as a person, artist and a director.