HOW DO UNI actors get ready for a big production? It's not all about rehearsing after school. For five members of this year's fall play, "The Diary of Anne Frank," TALENT came in handy.

TALENT stands for "Thespians Achieving Leading Entertaining Negotiating Together," and it's the name of the annual Illinois Thespian Student Leadership Conference.

For 19 hours in late September, Thespian troupes from around Illinois came together at Unity High School in Tolono to play games and learn how to work in different situations.

For the Uni actors who participated, they're hoping the payoff will be evident later this week when the fall play debuts Thursday night at 7 in the North Attic Playhouse.

In the meantime, two of the TALENT participants, Lauren Piester and Michelle Gao, offer this account of their experiences.

IN WHICH LAUREN GIVES AN OVERVIEW

From the night of Friday, Sept. 21, to the afternoon of Saturday, Sept. 22, the halls of Unity High School were filled with the sounds of singing, clapping, shouting, snoring, and the question, “Are you wearing underwear?”

Thespians and “theater geeks” from all over Illinois gathered together for almost a full 24 hours of skits, games, discussions, workshops, and a lock-in.

Hannah Lake-Rayburn, Jamie Weiser, and Michelle Gao, all seniors, and Lor Sligar, Sarah Lake-Rayburn, and I, all juniors, were among them. All of us but Jamie (who played volleyball) had been cast in the Uni fall play, "The Diary of Anne Frank."

Friday night began with a skit in the auditorium performed by a group of students called facilitators, who had been selected to lead the event.

The skit was very entertaining, featuring a guy dressed up as Celine Dion, a dinosaur, and a French revolutionary. After the skit, each thespian troupe got up and told a little about their school and all the shows they did last year and are planning to do this year.

Next was a scavenger hunt in the gym, encouraging us to mingle with others. One of the requirements was to find someone who wasn’t wearing underwear, and another was to find a person who could walk on their hands. This was followed by a large number of loud, energetic theater games, such as “Freeze!” and “Ride that Pony.”

Popcorn and drinks were served in the cafeteria, and then it was time for most people to get ready for bed, and for the six of us to get in the van and go home, as we did not want to sleep on the gym floor.

IN WHICH MICHELLE IMPROVISES

I know Lauren’s already talked a little about the scavenger hunt, but I must say that it was one of the most fun and effective ice-breakers that I’ve ever done in my life.

The questions were funny and sparked conversation; having been on my quest to find someone who could walk on their hands for more than a couple minutes, I finally found a random boy and demanded, “Do you know anyone who can do this?” and pointed at my page.

“One sec,” he said, and proceeded to walk a few feet away from me, push himself into a handstand, and walk back to me upside down.

I decided right then and there that he was pretty darn cool.

A half hour later:

“The next game we’re going to play is ‘Three-headed Opera Singer,’” the facilitator of my group said.

The collective response of those of us who didn’t know what she was talking about was to look around nervously and giggle a little bit.

“Like on 'Who’s Line,' you guys,” she said, catching the furtive glances around the circle.

More blank faces.

“OK, we’ll just show you, then,” she said, and linked arms with her fellow facilitator. “We need another person.”

I, being the brave soul that I am, jumped into their little line.

“I’ll do it!”

“Wonderful!”

We then proceeded to sing a song together; the catch was that we went down the line with each of us only singing one word. Our song turned out to be about a monster princess diva; the trio of boys that went after us sang:

“My …”

“House …”

“Is …”

“On …”

“Fiiiiiiirrre!”

As the boy on the end sang this last word loudly, the other two gave him weird looks, but then went along with it. Such is the joy of improvisation.

IN WHICH LAUREN DANCES CRAZILY

One of my very favorite games is called “Gigolo,” which goes a little something like this …

(The group chant is in italics)

Gig-a-looooo
Gig-gig-a-looooo
Gig-a-looooo
Gig-gig-a-looooo
Hey (insert name, such as "Michelle")
Hey what?
Are you ready?
For what?
To jig!
Jig-a-what?
Gigolo!
Well … My hands are high,
My feet are low
And this is how I gigolo (during this line, you do some crazy awesome dance)
Her hands are high
Her feet are low
And this is how she gigolos (imitate crazy awesome dance)
(repeat)

It is possibly one of the most entertaining games ever, because people do some really ridiculous dances. When one guy’s name was called, his dance in the middle of the circle consisted of the ever popular hand-behind-head-with-other-hand-around-opposite-ankle-and-then-thrashing-about dance. I did a little disco, and of course, a couple people did the robot. It’s a pretty cool game.

IN WHICH MICHELLE BECOMES A CAVEMAN

“Oh, oh, oh! Who wants to play Bachelor/Bachelorette?”

We had a new pair of facilitators in our group then, and we’d played every other game that they’d come up with. And at this suggestion, people perked up. We’d all played Bachelor/Bachelorette before.

A bachelorette (the person who guesses) was quickly chosen, and then three more girls were chosen to be contestants.

“Do any of you have any idea of what you want to be?” we were asked.

I shook my head, as did the girl on my left. However, the girl l would later recognize as Janina yelled, “Yes! I want to be a bipolar chicken!”

“I think you should be a leprechaun,” one boy said to me.

I stared at him for a second, and then twisted my lips into a grimace. I don’t have anything against leprechauns except for the fact that I don’t like them, but I certainly don’t have a very good Irish accent.

“Oh, come on. I like leprechauns,” he said, glaring right back at me.

“I’ll be the leprechaun,” the girl on my left volunteered.

“Thank you,” I told her gratefully.

“I think … that you should be a caveman,” the facilitator said to me.

I stared at him, too, for a moment, but then shrugged. I’d already turned one thing down.

“So, what do you do in your spare time?” the bachelorette asked me.

“I … uh … attempt to make fire,” I said, wincing inwardly at my delayed response.

“Ooh,” she said, smiling and winking at me. “Would you consider making fire with me?”

And I almost lost it.

“Yes,” I said shortly, and then slouched back down.

As she questioned the leprechaun and the chicken, I swung an imaginary club over my shoulder and fixed a mean expression on my face. As she got back to me, she took a look at my body language, and said, “Whoa, are you a caveman?”

“YES!” I shrieked, and got out of the line. Not only was I the first one to be successfully guessed, but it had taken her less than two minutes.

The leprechaun was guessed next, but the bipolar chicken took a little longer.

“BAWK!” Janina said, a huge grin on her face. “Bawk! Bawk … bawk. Bawk.”

Her lower lip stuck out in a pout as she traced a tear down her cheek.

“Are you some kind of bipolar … fowl? Turkey?”

“Close!” the rest of the group cried.

“Duck? Chicken?”

“Yes!”

IN WHICH LAUREN IS COMPLETELY RANDOM

We returned after a “restful” night at the Lake-Rayburns for a breakfast of bagels and orange juice, after which there was another skit and we were divided into groups of about 12 people.

We were supposed to have discussions about leadership and organization, but we quickly forgot about that as all the girls in the group gushed about Zac Efron and then began comparing schools.

I had fun shocking everyone and laughing at their disbelieving faces as I told them about our lack of cafeteria and football.

We then played a game where we were supposed to be employees of some sort of big company, meeting to discuss complaints of us causing pollution. Each of us had a role, but no one else knew what it was.

There was the veteran, who had been through revolution before and knew it didn’t work. There was the leader, who was supposed to lead the meeting, but the mediator ended up taking over.

Another girl and I were the ramblers. Anything and everything reminded us of some sort of anecdote. For instance …

“Oh my God, that reminds me of this one time when I was bit by a cougar!”

It was ridiculously fun. We didn’t have to come up with anything relevant, and could just spout off anything we thought of, which I’m pretty good at since I do that anyway.

Actually, that reminds me of the other night at play rehearsal, when we were supposed to be rehearsing the scene about Mrs. Van Daan’s fur coat, but then Ethan Berl had a spoon, and Dillon told me to make him a sandwich ….

IN WHICH MICHELLE IS AWED BY NEWSPAPERS

Our group took about 20 minutes to get out of our human knot.

In order to do so, there was a lot of arm twisting and stepping over and under people and twirling about … but we got there in the end.

When we went back inside, our task was to dress one of our group members up as a ninja using only newspaper and tape. We were sure we could pull it off.

We braided newspaper for a hat and a belt and gave Becky (our model/ninja) shoulder pads, shoes, throwing stars, even. We felt positive that our costume was the most amazing.

Unfortunately, we were wrong.

Our costume was great, but some of the people at TALENT were in charge of costuming at their various schools, and had come up with amazing designs.

One group dressed up a boy as a princess: The bodice was tight, the skirt long and flowy, with crinkled flowers on the skirt. If it had been made out of fabric, I would have paid money for it.

Another group (Lauren's, as a matter of fact) had dressed one of its members up as a unicorn.

Two other group members coaxed it out onto stage for the fashion show, and it plodded out on all fours demurely.

When one hind foot/knee accidentally caught on part of the princess’ dress, the actor inside the unicorn waited until one of his “trainers” lifted his foot and patted him on the head before moving.

The audience was in hysterics.

IN WHICH LAUREN SINGS DISNEY

After lunch, each group was supposed to perform a song parody, with lyrics about what we had done at TALENT so far. My group decided to parody “Under the Sea” from “The Little Mermaid.”

Thinking we had oodles of time, we set about making sea creatures out of newspaper left over from the costume fashion show (my group had the unicorn), thinking it would be really cool to do our performance of “Under the Sea” with sea creatures.

We quickly wrote some amazing lyrics and I started to make a sea urchin hat when, suddenly, the director of the event burst in.

“We’re waiting for your performance! Come on!”

“OH NO!”

We began frantically running into the auditorium, not knowing our lyrics at all, and not even having finished any sea creatures.

We found this to be especially unfortunate when all of the other groups turned out to be fully prepared. One group did “I Will Survive” and another did theirs to the “Star Wars” song, all of them having some choreography and creativity.

My group went up, crowded around the one copy of our song we had, and sang the best we could. It was disappointing, but the other groups were very entertaining, so it was all good.

After these performances, we went back to our groups, collected e-mails, and said goodbye.

Basically, it was an incredible experience. I met a lot of really strange people, but a lot of really cool ones as well, whom I would never have met otherwise. I also learned a ton of new games and gained confidence in myself as I was separated from the people I knew.

Next year, I hope to be a facilitator and help other kids have as much fun as I had. Or maybe I just want to boss people around. I’m not really sure.

I am sure, though, that I absolutely cannot wait to do it again.

IN WHICH MICHELLE IS OPTIMISTICALLY DEPRESSED

During the ride back home, we were overjoyed when a busload of other thespians pulled up alongside us. We waved and shrieked at them before pulling ahead of them. Their bus driver looked at us like we were crazy.

This year was the first year that Uni has participated in TALENT for a while, and I’m glad that I got a chance to go.

I won’t ever have the chance to be a facilitator — darn — but better to have gone my senior year than miss the awesome discussions about leadership and the fun games that only theater kids can truly understand.

MORE PHOTOS: THESPIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

Members of Lauren's group put the finishing touches on their newspaper unicorn. The actor inside was on hands and knees for more than an hour. Gargoyle photo by Lauren Piester

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The princess looks cute, the unicorn stays put, the astronaut smiles, the pirate looks conniving, and Santa has shorts on. Gargoyle photo by Lauren Piester

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“His mane even blows in the wind!” Facilitators Kirby and Matt blow across the unicorn's mane to demonstrate. Gargoyle photo by Lauren Piester

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Ninja Becky prepares to throw a newspaper shuriken. Gargoyle photo by Lauren Piester

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Students eat lunch and start brainstorming for songs to be performed later at the conference. Gargoyle photo by Lauren Piester