EVANSTON – At 10:43 p.m. on Friday, April 22, the last of the Waa-Mu cast died of the dysentery outbreak affecting the School of Comm. This news came the week before the Oregon Trail themed show “Another Way West” was set to open. According to friends of the cast, the student producers had attempted to replicate life on the Oregon Trail as accurately as possible, giving the actors meager rations, setting grueling rehearsal times, and, for some reason, spending most of the budget on 12 grandfather clocks.

The alleged final straw came soon after the entire cast caught the disease. “They would just wander around campus, trying to trade for food and water,” says Leslie Brown, who works in Sargent dining hall, “but I couldn’t give them anything, we have a strict ‘wagon wheels only’ policy and they were trying to bargain with live oxen.” The cast resorted to drinking from the Lakefill and succumbed to the effects of dysentery just a few days later.

“It was really kind of a mess,” admits stage manager Hailey Alberts, SOC ’17, “a few days before everyone got sick a thief came in the night and stole all of our supplies, set fire to the stage, and drowned three of our cast members. Morale never really recovered after that, but we had to keep going.”

According to some sources, attempts are being made to attempt to recast “Another Way West” but are quickly ending in exasperation. “If it’s not dysentery, it’s cholera. Or exhaustion. We even had four different potential cast members break all of their legs in separate, unrelated incidents.”

Alberts continued, “Frankly, we’re all tired. We’re thinking of changing the play to something easier to produce. I’ve heard great things about a new romance/drama production about an unrelenting Italian plumber fighting to save his lover. We just need a lot of magic mushrooms.”