Coffeehouse Takes Students to the Motion Pictures
Lights, camera, motion picture!
On a normal weekend at Liberty University, most college students are winding down by 11:30 p.m., but on the night of April 14, Coffeehouse: The Motion Picture, hosted by Student Activities, was just getting started.
A highlights reel of iconic movie clips set the scene for Liberty students, who cheered in appreciation as their favorite lines flashed past in the Vines Center.
The script for the evening included covers of popular songs from movies, short films spoofing classic flicks, dance numbers to well-remembered tunes and trivia games testing the audience’s cinematic smarts.
Charlie Eivens, a recently-graduated psychology major from Liberty, sang “Footloose” as his swan song for Coffeehouse. The band has played together in the last three Coffeehouses under different names: LU2, The 1971 and, on Saturday night, Six Reps for Dancing.
Eivens, with a total of seven Coffeehouse performances under his belt, said performing is a completely different experience than just sitting in the audience.
“It’s an opportunity that not a lot of people get, and if anyone has wanted to play in front of a massive amount of people, they get it through Coffeehouse,” Eivens said. “It’s awesome. It feels like you’re actually playing at your own concert for five minutes.”
With Eivens graduated and the rest of the band on the brink of saying goodbye to Liberty, this Coffeehouse may be their last act together. Eivens said that, in the end, it is all about the performance and the audience response.
“I hope with this, that they felt the groove of the song and they want to dance, because that’s what the song is all about,” Eivens said.
Eivens had the audience tapping their toes and cheering him on as he danced and spun his way through the number. Near the climax of the song, Eivens ditched the microphone for a pair of drumsticks and joined the drummer, crashing his way to the final lines.
Act after act attempted to keep the hype going. A short film parody of National Treasure, during which lead actor Sam Cooper channeled his inner Nicolas Cage, left the audience in stiches. Other acts, like the cover of “Where Is My Mind?” from the movie Fight Club, struck a more intense note.
D-Trex Dance Crew, one of the final performances of the evening, meshed movies with one of on-campus students’ favorite activities: open dorms. Their performance followed an evening at open dorms watching movies, where the dance troupe “flicked through” various films. The dance routine included remixes of songs and scenes from movies like “The Lion King,” “Mean Girls” and “High School Musical” before open dorms officially came to an end.
Shania Thorpe-Freytiz, a senior and the team captain of D-Trex, has participated with the hip-hop group in every Coffeehouse since her freshman year. Though being in a larger group means fewer moments in the spotlight, Thorpe-Freytiz said performing onstage is still a surreal experience.
“It’s a Hannah Montana moment, because we walk around and no one knows us, but as soon as we get on stage and they say our name there’s a roar of audience, and we’re just overwhelmed because we feel like Beyoncé,” Thorpe-Freytiz said. “But we know those five minutes on stage are the only moments we’re going to get the praise, and as soon as we get offstage we’re back to Miley Cyrus.”
Thorpe-Freytiz has never been just an audience member at Coffeehouse, but love for the iconic night is felt backstage, too.
“(Coffeehouse is about) hearing a band singing their favorite song from a movie, seeing us dance to a song that they love from a movie, and just getting that nostalgic feeling of watching it onstage again,” Thorpe-Freytiz said.
Credits rolled, and bleary-eyed students staggered back to their dorms, humming theme songs and reliving their favorite acts. Nothing was on their minds but their pillows and, perhaps, an idea for next year’s performance.
End scene.