October is home to strangeness; dubbed “spooky season,” the month is full of oddities and mysteries, and Asbury’s campus is not an exception. Posters advertising something called Midnight Centennial have been appearing around campus and a similarly named social media page has been following Asbury students, but it seems that no one knows what Midnight Centennial actually is. The only information is that something is happening at midnight at Centennial Park on Oct. 16.
At last, the mystery is finally being revealed. Midnight Centennial is actually a performance of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” featuring a group of Asbury students.
Senior director Matthew Smitley describes “Endgame” as a spiritual sequel to an earlier Beckett play, called “Waiting for Godot.”
“I was in ‘Waiting for Godot’ [when it was done at Asbury], it was actually the first play I was ever in, and that got me started on Beckett and really obsessed with him,” said Smitley.
Smitley’s experience with “Waiting for Godot” sparked his interest in acting and started the journey towards Midnight Centennial.
Smitley attended the Sundance Film Festival with a group of Asbury students in 2019, which is where he received an email from Joshua McGee asking Smitley to audition for “Waiting for Godot.”
“I was in the Sundance resort in the bathroom about to see some movie and I answered his email and was like “Yes I’ll do it, but I don’t get back until [after the festival],’” said Smitley. “It really saved me, it just really gave me some belonging. It also kind of opened some doors.”
After his performance in “Waiting for Godot,” Smitley continued acting. He appeared in “An Inspector Calls” and was the titular character in “Müller.” These shows taught Smitley more about acting and theater in general as he dove into the production world, but his experience performing Beckett stayed on his mind.
“Me and Josh Sanders were sitting in a computer lab during a film shoot and we were just talking about Beckett because he was obsessed with ‘Waiting for Godot,’” said Smitley. “I don’t remember how it happened, but that’s when we decided to do ‘Endgame.’”
The next step for Smitley and Sanders was executing their plan, which presented its fair share of challenges. A series of complications birthed an unconventional idea — performing “Endgame” at midnight at Centennial Park.
“Immediately we started walking around and asking people “Would you go to a show at midnight in October” and everyone was like “Yeah, that’d be awesome,’” said Smitley. “I started thinking about Centennial Park, and I called the city and they gave us no issues, as of yet they’ve still given us no issues.”
After receiving permission from the city, the duo went to work. Along with directing, Smitley took the role of Ham. Sanders is playing Clove and sophomores Gavin Reed and Lily Kesten were recruited to play Nag and Nell, respectively. Kesten has also acted as assistant director and stage manager. Junior Rebecca Sams is both the lead stage hand and graphic designer.
“Everybody’s doing a lot and everybody’s pulling their own weight as far as production stuff,” said Smitley. “It’s been really a collective group because we don’t have the backing of the department, we don’t have a bunch of stuff. We have to scrounge around and find stuff and scavenge and we’ve kind of all done it.”
The production has been entirely organized by the group of students, which they hope will be an inspiration to others.
“I feel like as a collective, all of us individually, if we can pull this off we can do anything because it’s the most out there thing,” Smitley said. “I mean we’re completely on our own, except for the permission of the city. It’s just us. It’s self funded. It feels like freedom. We can carve out and do this thing, do this little thing, and it can feel big because it’s present and we’re there and we care about it and it’s real. It’s not just to make a buck or say we did it, it’s something we care about and that can still exist even if it’s a midnight show at a park. We, the artists, anybody, can do what they want to do. I hope that’s an important message that people take away, that they can just do it.”
