Since 1994, students have been lining up for hours each month to buy tickets for Guerrilla Theatre, brought to campus by The University of Alabama’s chapter of the national theater honor society Alpha Psi Omega.
The show can include basic performance acts like singing and dancing and extend all the way to other types of performance art like poetry, stand-up comedy and spoken word. Because Guerrilla Theatre is a variety show, audiences will never attend the monthly show and see the same act twice.
Keegan Butler, a senior majoring in theater and president of Alpha Psi Omega, said the shows that take the audience through a wide range of emotions are always the most touching.
“They take people on roller coasters of emotion from being very happy to being very raw and gritty to being spectacularly beautiful,” Butler said. “Those are the types of guerrillas that everybody loves.”
Sign-up sheets go up in Rowand-Johnson Hall the Sunday before Guerrilla Theatre is set to take place, and any student can sign up as long as they are willing to abide by Alpha Psi Omega’s rules, which include no nudity, no breaking of any law and no harming of any person or any animal. Each piece of performance art can be up to 10 minutes long and 10 acts from the sign-up sheet are selected to be performed.
“The most unconventional act I’ve ever seen was a four square act,” Butler said. “Four guys signed up, drew out a four square court on the stage, and started playing then invited anyone from the audience to join them.”
Each Guerrilla Theatre has a theme and is selected at the beginning of the year to give Alpha Psi Omega officers adequate time to create and put up advertisement posters around campus.
“My favorite tends to be the one or two during the year that everybody takes a part in, like the masquerade-themed or zombie-themed guerrillas,” Butler said. “Even non-APO members dress up for those.”
Guerrilla Theatre has been known as a safe place to perform since its conception 19 years ago. The University’s Alpha Psi Omega was the first chapter to start a monthly Guerrilla Theatre, and many schools have since followed suit. It continues to bring all kinds of students to Allen Bales Theatre once a month to let loose through performance art.
“My favorite experience with APO is watching someone who has been into themselves just open up on stage and belt a beautiful song or release so much pure emotion onstage that the audience can’t help but feel for that person,” Butler said. “It has the ability to affect hundreds of people at a time, and it can captivate nearly everyone simply through movement, speech and music.”
Alpha Psi Omega pledges are required to perform in at least one show in a group dance performance. Miranda Hamilton, a sophomore majoring in theatre and an APO pledge, said Guerrilla is a great chance for students who don’t participate in a departmental production to put something together and perform.
Members teach pledges Alpha Psi Omega line dances, along with the family song, “Soldier,” that is added to each year and performed at each show.
“You don’t have to be in APO to know them,” Hamilton said. “If you pick it up at [the show], sing it and we’ll join you.”
Stacy Alley, a professor of musical theatre and dance, is in her first year of sponsorship of Alpha Psi Omega but remembers Guerrilla Theatre being a staple in campus life when she attended graduate school at the University from 2003-04. Alley said she most enjoys seeing students’ enthusiasm and passion for what they do.
“It’s the fact that they get to sometimes step outside their comfort zone and tackle projects and performances that they otherwise wouldn’t get to do or be brave enough to do,” Alley said. “It’s nice to go and be amused by one act and be so deeply touched by something in another act. No matter what it is they choose to do, the audience is so incredibly supportive because they allow themselves to be vulnerable.”
November’s Guerrilla Theatre show is still to be determined, but those interested can check uaapo.weebly.com for updates on Alpha Psi Omega events.
