The University of Sheffield Light Entertainment Society, also known as USLES (pronounced “useless”) is one of the university’s three drama societies: focusing on small budget, cheesy comedy that anyone can take part in and enjoy.
Every year USLES performs a variety of comedy plays, holding open auditions where everyone who auditions gets a role. These plays always include a large amount of dad jokes, home made props and quality writing: making each production equally entertaining and amusing. Also, half the profits from ticket sales from every performance are donated to a charity which is chosen by society members. Therefore, by engaging with the society, you are also making valuable changes to the people and society around you!
Forge Press sat down with the writer, Will, assistant director Mason and lead Rachel of USLES’ week one show: “Love Bites: a very normal office romance” to discuss the plot, origins and cast experience as they get closer to opening night.
When discussing inspiration behind the title of the play, writer and director Will admitted, “essentially it’s a Twilight parody” originating from what fellow USLES members call his “obsession” with Vampires.
However, “Love Bites” definitely has more quirks and nuances than the original Twilight series, as Will “thought it’d be really funny if instead of, you know, a teenage girl, it was a 40-year old man”.
The play follows 40 year old protagonist Dale, played by the society’s inclusions officer Rachel, who feels the character is “He’s great. He’s just… He’s so sad. He’s a sad little man”. However, his monotonous life is flipped completely by the emergence of the love interest, and vampire, Edmund who is both simultaneously based off and is also obsessed with Twilight’s own Edward Cullen. This submerges Dale into a “love arrow” as Rachel calls it- triggering the chaos that ensues in the rest of the play.
Dale’s dreary office life as an accountant, alongside his two co workers Nathan and Rebecca is heavily contrasted with the other half of characters that assistant director Mason affectionately labels “the freaks”. This includes Edmund, his father (inevitably named Count Dadcula), his aunt and the play’s main protagonist: the “evil business wizard”. When Will finally came up with this character, he “knew I had something beautiful, and I never added a single other thing to that character”. Despite the vague title of the antagonist, the cast add that the name is in fact the entire storyline and personality of that character: nothing more and nothing less.
The play is very much Will’s “child,” developed slowly over the course of a year, with plenty of pauses and disruptions along the way (as all writers experience). With a cast of eight, assistant director Mason insists they are “very good, experienced actors” who have thrown themselves into the chaos of the script. The rehearsal schedule — made trickier by it falling during the summer holidays — has been Will’s biggest stressor throughout the process, but it hasn’t stopped the team from preparing an unforgettable performance.
When asked to sum up the production in a single sentence, Mason described it as “a bunch of very, very silly, friendly, goofy people playing very, very, very silly roles. There’s something so fun about watching people commit to the bit, taking a character and bringing them to life while just being really funny.” If that doesn’t capture the spirit of Love Bites, and of USLES itself, nothing will. With vampires, office workers, and even an “evil business wizard,” the society promises a week one performance that’s as ridiculous as it is unmissable.
