Talk about wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am: the All Student Theatre (AST) group seduced each other, then hastily broke up within an hour last Friday night.

“The Sexiest Halloween Fundraiser Ever,” AST’s first fundraiser, was named not only to reflect the personalities of the actors involved, but what they would be giving to their audience.

“AST [tends to choose] the risqu‚ in musical theatre,” said Thomas Witholt, senior president of AST. “We’ve done ‘Hair’ and ‘Once Upon a Mattress,’ [which] had some not-so-subtle sexual jokes. We’re theatre people, we have lots of cast parties, and we cram tons of people into a small tent for cuddle nights. There’s a lot of sexual energy, so we just figured we would play on that.”

Winners of a costume contest the group held received tickets to AST’s spring show “Cabaret.” They were also given passes to well-known strip club, Diamond’s Cabaret, in East St. Louis.

“It’s pretty damn sexy,” added Witholt.

The idea for AST’s fundraiser came about after a paint accident on Beaumont Pavilion last year.

“We got slapped with a $4,000 fine for excess paint on the [pavilion] stage last year,” said senior Dan Rubin, AST secretary. “[It was] our fault, but we [still] needed to figure out a way to make money. So we brainstormed and came up with this. It turned out to be a great way to advertise the upcoming auditions for the spring AST show, “Cabaret,” which is going to be huge.”

While the fundraiser provided an opportunity for AST to sell some of the many costumes in its collection, its main attraction was a musical revue of various songs from shows that played up a theme of love, seduction and breakups.

“We all know that relationships are the scariest thing ever, and therefore apropos for Halloween,” said Witholt.

Juniors Julia Smith and Jason Yerep, the fundraiser’s narrators/emcees, tried to mirror the moods of the songs throughout the event. Smith said that the songs “ranged from sweet celebrations of love to bitter breakup tunes.”

“I imagined there’d be bigger group numbers, and perhaps flashier costumes, but what they did worked very well,” said senior Melanie Camras, an audience member. “Julia and Jason surprised me by exceeding my expectations a bit-they were fantastically hilarious.”

One song about the tumultuous nature of love, sung by senior Sarah Holtz and sophomore Deirdre O’Rourke, proved to be an audience favorite.

“The most memorable moment was when Sarah and Deirdre sang ‘Take Me or Leave Me’ from ‘Rent,’” said freshman Dave Zucker. “There were certainly some very sexy moments that shocked the audience.”

Camras agreed, noting the “extremely hot” nature of both their voices and the choreography of the piece.

Though Holtz described the show as a mix of improvisation and direction that came together two weeks prior to the fundraiser, Witholt noted that AST’s annual spring show is the result of months of planning. In the future, there will be more planning for the fall show so it will not be such a last-minute idea.

“We plan on producing a student-written show, making AST entirely done by students,” said Witholt. “We are very excited about [this] prospect, especially because it will give us the opportunity to produce both a [traditional] drama and some student dramas.”

Witholt added that because of the fundraiser’s success, AST plans to turn the Halloween show/fundraiser into a yearly tradition.

“When we came up with the name [of the fundraiser], we were of course banking on the fact that it was the ONLY Halloween fundraiser ever,” said Rubin. “But it actually turned out to be pretty damn hot.”

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