By Madelyn Stone, News Correspondent

Students shared Shakespearean sonnets, modern theatrical monologues and original poems at the first “Words in Action” event last Saturday at afterHOURS. Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine and Northeastern student theatre group Acting Out co-sponsored the event, which was primarily coordinated by the latter’s president, Miranda Paquet, a middler English major.
With only four cast members in Acting Out’s fall production of David Auburn’s play “Proof,” Paquet said she wanted to find more ways for students to get theatrically involved. Since she also works with Spectrum, Paquet said she thought merging theatrics and poetry for a spoken word night made sense.
“I wanted to give our group other acting opportunities, so I came up with the idea of having a spoken word night,” Paquet said. “But then I’m also involved in Spectrum, so I decided it would be a good pairing.”
Alan Nolan, a middler psychology major, began the night with a monologue from Michael Cristofer’s play “Breaking Up,” which describes the feelings of a man deciding to settle in his relationship.
“I like the piece because it kind of represents feelings that everybody goes through at various points in time,” he said. “I think that just kind of jumped out at me and I thought it would be really cool to perform.”
The unrestricted format of “Words in Action” allowed the event to become an open forum of creativity, with a dozen participants reciting their own poems and reading the work of others, from Atwood to Poe, aloud.
Junior international affairs major Jen Wheaton, Acting Out Vice President of Finance, performed a monologue and also played a role in coordinating the event.
“We’ve been talking about doing a spoken word event for a while so it was exciting that it finally happened,” she said. “You don’t get many opportunities to perform, to display your acting skills, to perform pieces of poetry or whatever it may be, unless you’re in a play or you go to an event like this.”
Among the audience at “Words in Action” was junior biomedical physics major Lauren Moore. Moore said it was her first time attending a spoken word event.
“I’ve never been to something like this,” she said. “It was completely different than anything I’ve been to before. It was cool. I liked to hear poetry read out loud.”
Casey Curry, a junior English major, attended the event as well. She said she enjoyed the event, with just a note of reservation.
“I thought it was good,” Curry said. “It was a little slow, but I thought it picked up towards the end. I liked the theatrical [monologues] more than the poems probably.”
Nolan said he thought that overall the event was a success.
“I really enjoyed the whole ‘Words in Action’ event,” he said. “I thought there were a lot of really good performers and a couple people that we did not know were going to be performing that jumped in, performed, and did fantastic jobs. I like the openness of it and that everybody is welcome and it’s still kind of relaxed.”
Andrea Hampel, a middler English major and editor-in-chief of Spectrum Literary Arts Magazine, helped sponsor the event. She agreed the event went well, but wished for greater participation.
“It would be nice to get more people involved,” Hampel said. “I think if we could get more people interested and willing to read it would be awesome.”
“Words in Action” was just one of the many events Acting Out has planned for the year. As a theatre group on campus, the club regularly sponsors one drama production each semester.
“We write our own show in the spring and in the fall we do a copyrighted show,” Paquet said. “We try to have a production that deals with an issue that the Northeastern community faces.”
In the past, the group has performed shows related to World AIDS Week, No Violence Week and Human Rights Week, while this semester’s show involves mental illness. Paquet said Acting Out is always willing to put on events with other groups, as they did with “Words in Action.”
“Our group is so varied that pretty much any group can come to us with a request and we can work something out,” Paquet said. “We’d love to collaborate with things. That’s what we did tonight.”