Today was the final day of university camp. My classes went well, despite needing to show up with a filler activity. I was on the hook for both the class time I usually had, as well as their presentations during the graduation. They asked me to come watch them perform plays that they had written in the camp. Having already sat through scripted plays during my last semester, I expected that there might be some odd stories that I’d have to watch. I wasn’t prepared.

The first group did an adaptation of the movie “OldBoy” called “Old Farting Boy”, where the main character accidentally killed some one’s mother farting in an elevator, was acquitted of murder, then was kidnapped and forced to eat dumplings for ten years by the son who sought revenge. The highlight of this when the “Old Farting Boy” went insane and drew a picture on the wall with his own feces (chocolate syrup.) The entire hall cringed when he finished writing the word “뚱” (ddong) on the board with the chocolate, then dipped his finger in and tasted it. The story was somewhat convoluted and went on too long, but there was a structure to it. It was hilarious.

The second story was bizarre. It was like the Lord of the Rings was run through Google Translate from Korean to English, then back, about ten times, with a lot more cursing and incomprehensible dialog. The idea was that a weird student dressed as Gollem had the points the students had been participating with in the camp, which he called his precious. The student dressed as Gollum had a long sweater, tights, and dressed in women’s panties. He would encounter different group of students and hop around, accidentally flashing them.

Everyone was just flipping out whenever they had to see this guy assaulting our senses with ladies underwear as they beat him with a belt. It was beyond weird. There was a battle that culminated in Gandalf shooting “Arm pit arrows” . Eventually all of the characters died except a gangster and Gollum, who was then beaten with a shoe by the gangster. The twist at the end was that the students had been competing on a “Penalty score” board, so the precious points actually resulted in the “winner” being in last place.

Yeah. It didn’t make sense to anyone at the camp either. But it was certainly original. Everyone collectively took a long, hard look at pure English insanity while this was being acted out in front of us. Then the manager of the camp let us take three minutes for a break to eat cookies.

We dove back in with a bizarre take on the Snow White tale where eventually the Prince fell in love with the Evil Queen Witch and a Narcoleptic Snow White and the Three Dwarves had a sexy dance to signal the beginning of the “Loser Dwarf Revolution.” It was worth it for that last phrase alone.

The final story was a poignant tale about hazing in the army, cheating girlfriends that go behind the back of their boyfriends while in military service, and the sacrifice an orphan soldier standing on a land mine to save his younger friend so that the homesick soldier could visit his sad mother. They had costumes and lots of other side plots. This was probably the best acted skit, but they were all like Jimmy Fallon and laughing at each other’s jokes.

When some of the other teachers left for the door, I headed out too. I just couldn’t handle that much insanity. I had stayed for two hours of plays. The scripts were original and creative and written by the groups themselves, and they gave a lot performing them. Everyone had a good time watching too. I guess since it was the last day and they didn’t have to worry about seeing each other again they were willing to go all out. I don’t know how I would have graded any of them if they had performed the same stories in my class, but today I was just a spectator.