Oh hey, what is this?! A post about theatre? Why yes it is!
On April fools, but totally serious.
What is spex?
Spex is a the traditional Swedish (and Finnish) form of student theatre. It is unique in the sense that a spex is a fully fledged and scripted musical theatre production, but the audience is encouraged to shout prompts for the actors to improvise at any moment. The most often heard prompt by far is "Omstart", meaning to repeat something, which the actors will gladly do, often with a small twist. But the audience can and will also get creative and create new in-jokes or running gags over the course of a show by interacting with the characters.
Why am I writing about this?
Because I have passionately worked on Spex productions for the past two years and it has been a blast.
How did I get into this?
Before moving to Sweden to study in 2022, I had never even been to an improv class, but one of my friends at KTH dragged me to one, and what can I say? It was a lot of fun, and not only because the people were very nice!
So I joined the English Theatre Improv Club (ET) at KTH. At the time of writing, ET is the only spex that exclusively performs in English, making spex accessible to international students and audiences. During my first year with ET, I of course went to a lot of improv sessions, but also helped with costume and prop design for the big show, and organised a lot of internal events for the association. I also served on the board during the second half of the academic year.
Taking on responsibility
Forward almost one year and in the academic year of 23/24, I am not only part of the ET association's board, but also the new head script writer for that year's show. I had done some creative writing before, but this was definitely a jump in the deep end for me. A creative writing project of this size was completely new to me, and on top of that, there was a team of talented actors, directors, producers, costume designers, etc. counting on the outcome.
Luckily, I would not have to do it all by myself. Instead, my first step was to hire a team of writers who would collaborate on the script. So I marketed the position to new and existing students at KTH, as well as inside the association. This went so well, that I got over 20 applicants for the script working group. Not a bad thing of course, but this meant that I would also have to jump over my own shadow and reject some people. I did a small written interview process with all applicants, asking for experience and a small writing sample among other things, and soon I had narrowed the pool down to a talented team of six motivated people.
Making it work
Even though we were a team of seven, writing a whole script for a 2+ hour show was not a small task. We had countless meetings to create an interesting theme, characters with meaningful arcs, and a plotline with one or two twists. All of that happened before we actually got to writing a single scene. It took us approximately the same amount of time to outline the story, as it actually took us to write it.
The outcome
In the end, we successfully delivered the script on time, and we actually received very positive feedback from the rest of the production team, as well as from the actors. This year's show is a light-hearted murder mystery in a student dorm, charicaturing student life to its fullest. The premiere will be on the 6th of April, with a second round of shows planned in May.
Overall, I am incredibly grateful for this whole experience. I learned a lot, both as a writer and as a team leader.