by Gabriel Perez

The University of Southern Mississippi brings to the table an imaginative play that challenges you to keep up while feeding you a deep curiosity as to how it’s all connected. This is Rajiv Joseph’s “Describe the Night”. The biggest highlight of the show for me is the world it takes place in. The design team knocked it out of the park here by creating almost like a Minecraft-looking kind of setting for 90% of the play, with the remaining tenth being shots done with a camera. My favorite “set” was around the first act where there was almost like an inverse triangle composed of filling cabinets, which I thought was brilliant and aesthetically magnetic. I thought the head mast of Stalin (or who I will assume was Stalin) was such a bold choice. I have been trying to wrap my head around the ‘meaning’ of it and I have come to the personal conclusion of it symbolizing the people in charge always watching over its citizens. The play makes you want to follow the string of the story to see where you will end up and most importantly, what you will end up with. You find yourself jumping between times that have a 90-year span.

I think the character that stuck with me the most was Isaac, played by Kevin Rains. Not only am I an enthusiast of literature and stories, but I also feel his character was the best written. His words were simple, yet the evidence of his intellect was there. Of course, this was also due to Rains courageously playing Isaac with a sense of innocence and humility. Isaac felt like the character with the most self-awareness and the strongest desire to be a part of something greater, which was very appealing to watch.

Overall, I enjoyed Describe the Night very much. It was entrancing, exploratory, and visually appealing. I believe USM did an incredible job with the editing of this piece and making it feel like an authentic film.