255 Grapevine Packs the Pews

Shelves outside of the A. J. Gordon Memorial Chapel were crammed with canned food last Saturday night, and the pews inside were just as packed with the Gordon students, alumni, friends and family whose donated cans had purchased admission to the new Homecoming variety show, 255 Grapevine.

255 Grapevine claimed the time slot formerly filled by faculty talent show, nodroG, which will now take place in spring. The new event was the brainchild of theater professor Norm Jones and theater/English major Amy Laing ’11 who was also stage manager of the show. Laing said she hoped the show would have “more audience involvement and form… a stronger sense of community between departments.”

255 Grapevine’s 14 acts and 100 performers pulled the audience into the show like no Gordon show had before. Talents ranged from country music to Broadway farce to a four-person piano face-off modeled after the popular Guitar Hero video games, and the audience was supplied with props to participate in each of these.

Alumna Noni Mason (’92) and her husband choreographed one of the main attractions, “Stomp,” which invited the crowd to click their pens in time with the beat. Assistant professor of music Michael Monroe’s four Piano Heroes played the 1812 Overture on two grand pianos. “We asked you to bring cans,” said Monroe. “But we forgot to ask you to bring cannons.” Instead, the audience was given brown paper lunch bags and cued to inflate and pop them when the theme sounded.

The beloved Dr. Marv Wilson told everyone about his wild goose chase after a stolen Gordon van in New York City. “How good it was to come home to 255 Grapevine,” he said. Jenifer Hevelone-Harper, a student turned history professor, shared her experiences as a student and as a faculty member. She, too, considered 255 Grapevine her home.

Students agreed that the message of the interviews was good, but they seemed long and somewhat out of place, disrupting the energy created by standing-ovation acts like “Stomp.” Even so, people walked out with smiles on their faces.

Two days after the show, Laing was still beaming. “I am so happy with the way it went,” she said. “It was fun and created the sort of community experience we were looking for.”

*Alysa Obert contributed to this article.