On Friday 13th March, PLC hosted the 17th annual Carlton Cup – a theatresports competition between Newington and PLC that’s notorious for never letting a team win twice. The winner has consistently alternated between PLC and Newington, but last year, we broke the cycle and won twice in a row.
This year, we won for the third time in a row – which is the first time it’s been done in the competition’s history.
Each school brought 5 teams and a combined total of fifty competitors, making the night a show to remember. The show ran in three sets, each with different theatresports games. Beginning with a one-minute section, players got up on stage improvised scenes entirely on the spot with no communication, a location and five seconds to plan. Some highlights included a thrilling mime in an escape room from the team “Best Extras”, featuring Newington’s MVP of the night, Nam Nguyen, and an ‘I Love You’ from “Best Pirate Impression”, where a character has to say “I love you” to something within a minute.
Kicking it off with a bang, we moved onto the round of two-minute games, the extra time a much-needed help to create a good scene. This was immediately evident in the only perfectly scored scene of the night again from “Best Pirate Impression” – an ‘Entrances and Exits’, where exactly two people have to be onstage at all times. Their scene at an amusement park had everything from moving heads quitting to a missing attraction to inducting a visitor into getting locked into a lifelong job as a head in the funhouse.
The top two teams from each school made it to the final three-minute round: only the best to cup off the show. Both Newington teams chose to improvise a ‘Time Warp’, where the announcer can change the time of the scene anytime to anywhere. They both performed incredibly, pulling ahead of PLC’s ‘Broadway Musical’ scenes (performing a new Broadway musical with only a title) by just a few points, securing the victory that Newington has been awaiting for nearly two decades.
From flying cars to a victory against all the odds, the Carlton Cup this year was certainly a night to remember, and the trophy will hopefully remain in our cabinet for years to come