Red card

So, in Dunedin there's this little thing called a red card. If you live in a flat, you get one red card a year that you can use at your leisure. Using a red card means that all of your flatmates, regardless of situation, desire, or lack thereof, must dedicate some period of time to joining you in a task which you have planned and prepared for. Though alcohol is almost always a necessary item in doing a red card, the rules otherwise are reasonably open, with red cards ranging from 'field day' like activities, to lock-ins, scavenger hunts, finishing a goon in a lecture theatre, blindfolded cooking, or getting dropped off on the west coast, forced to hitch home.

On Saturday, after planning mine forever, it was finally time to pull the red card. Each participant was given a small red handmade card stock envelope with some instructions enclosed and a role assignment, as well as a script. 'twas to be a day at the theatre.

I had found a 5 person play online, called family 2.0 that was to be filmed, and then eventually edited down into a hopefully humorous film. I also acquired 3 boxes of wine, and 2 extras to help with filming.

To start the night off right, it was crucial to play appropriate, relevant, drinking games... Hence my move towards improv. First we started with charades-- a simple classic that no one could honestly be too afraid of. The rounds were structured with everyone writing down 5 recognizable people on little pieces of paper, and putting them in a bucket. Each person that had a minute to go through as many names as they could in the bucket and get the other players to guess. That number, subtracted from 10, was the amount of drinks every one had to take. Once all the names were done, from a round where you could use any form of speech to explain the person, we moved on to the second round, where you were only allowed one word. Finally, at the completion of all the names once again we went onto proper charades, where you had to imitate the person, and the drink amount went from 10 - to 7-. There was an abundance of britney spears', will smiths, michael jacksons and flatmates in the mix, which was both peculiar and hilarious.

Next we played "honey if you love me you'll smile" which really just entails you walking up to someone, saying that, and if they smile, they drink... if they can go without smiling, and return a 'honey, i love you but i just can't smile,' then the drink is yours to have.

After we played park bench where you had to convince someone to get off of the park bench. award for best attempt goes to cmac with, " *longing, smiling stare at seat*... ahh, that's where my father and I first made love..."

Then we did freeze scenes where two people would improv something [anything] and do so with massive gesticulations, and then be told to freeze at a point, wherein the person first in the scene would get 'tapped out' by a new person, replaced, and the new person would be forced to continue the improv with a completely different scene starting from the same physical position.

The final game of ridiculousness was that of speed fairy tales and emotional fairytales... We split into a team of 3 and a team of 4 to discuss the fairy tale we had to put on (hansel and gretal, and 3 little pigs). With the opposite team as our audience, we performed it in 60 seconds, then again in 30 seconds, and then in 10 seconds... Massive breadcrumb-shout fest mess. Then each team was given a genre from the other, and made to perform it again. 3 little pigs went porno, and hansel and gretal an opera. The only regret is the lack of recording it.

With everyone good and drunk we were able to move into the most important roder of business, the play. No one knew their lines, of course, and almost no one could be bothered putting in more effort than the minimal, and with two epic takes taken, we all had enough. The products are absolutely hilarious, and a video has been made since filming it to reap the benefits of our labour... and capitalise on the epic embarrassment factor.

The night led us to a party a few houses away, and then an eventual trip to the octagon for a dance release.