Outside, an open can of paint and two wooden boards are temporarily abandoned on the concrete ground of the Forum Building. Inside, a janitor pushes open the door of room 111, a quizzical look sweeping over his features — and understandably so.

In the middle of what is by day a lecture hall, a man stands atop a park bench, a flowered dress stretched across his torso, a beard covering his face, his brown hair poking out from beneath a platinum blonde wig, and a toy rifle dangling from his arms.

What the janitor may not know is that such antics are all in a day's work for Luke Davin (senior-film and video and theatre) and the other six cast members of No Refund Theatre's latest production, Cloud Nine. Written in 1979 by Caryl Churchill, the play is a black comedy, a satire that resembles a twisted version of American Beauty — a version on a lethal dose of hallucinogens and speed.

"I feel like I'm in some blasphemous soap opera," cast member Melissa Osborne (freshman-theatre) said with a laugh. Osborne plays Edward, an effeminate boy, in the first act of Cloud Nine and a lonely grandmother in the second.

"They cast me as Edward and I said I couldn't do it," Osborne said. "I had to get over my inhibitions. This is a very odd play."

Osborne's greatest fear: her more sexually charged scenes won't be well received by audience members.

Her fears are not unfounded. Getting over inhibitions is something that Osborne and each of the cast members simply has to do. Gender bending is just one of the many ways in which the play explores deeper social issues: sexual repression, gender conditioning and colonialism.

Set in a desert in 1880 Victorian Africa, the first act alone completely smashes any reservations the actors may have had prior to being cast. Osborne is not the only cast member who had to get over personal gender boundaries. Chris Newell (junior-theatre), who normally dons a baseball cap and adidas sneakers, plays Betty, a sexually frustrated wife who strains to be the epitome of femininity.

As his seven cast members assemble on the stage for a rehearsal, co-director Sean Kelly (senior-film and video) gives a little pep talk: "Just pretend, that's what we're all doing, pretending."

And so they do.

"My skin is black, but oh my soul is white. I hate my tribe, my master is my light," a cast member read from a folder, his lines highlighted from a photocopied script.

"I live for Clive. The whole aim of my life is to be what he asks for in a wife," recited Newell in a ridiculously high-pitched feminine voice.

And so begins a stream of confessionals from the characters. So begins the bawdy Cloud Nine, a play that if nothing more, will leave quite an impression on the audience.

Ben Brownlee (freshman-engineering) is one of the seven cast members. He plays Harry, a character he described as ludicrous. The two characters he plays in Cloud Nine, Harry and Edward, have posed the highest challenge of his acting career.

"Every other character I played had some part of me in them, so it was very easy. Whereas these characters are very far removed from myself," said Brownlee. He reflected on the differences between himself and the characters he must morph into for Cloud Nine. "It's not so much a matter of how stifled they are, but it's how uncomfortable they are with being themselves. I would like to think that I am not.

"There's a lot more depth to this play, it's not just orgies in parks. These are real people. People trying to find themselves. Regardless of spirituality or sexuality, I'd like to think that we could amuse people and make them think at the same time," Brownlee said.

The humor in the script is one trait that attracted co-director Kelly to the play. He and his roommate/co-director Micah Winarchick had contemplated taking on the task of directing. After a friend recommended Churchill's Cloud Nine to Kelly, the deal was sealed.

"I'm much more comfortable acting," Kelly said. "As a director, I'm much more nervous. Once the actors step out on that stage, they're in control. I can only help them prepare."

Directing, for Kelly, is about casting, a job that he and Winarchick approached very seriously. "It was most important to us to find versatile actors, actors with a sense of humor," he said.

Little tasks in plays with higher budgets might be divided between several people. But in this NRT production, those tasks fall into Winarchick and Kelly's hands.

Before the cast arrived for rehearsal, Winarchick and Kelly had to make a trip to the store in search of just the right props. They returned with a set of fake pearls and a hot pink, sequined purse.

Not only are they responsible for picking out props and casting, they also direct stage movements, from the tiniest facial expressions to an uproarious fight scene. They're the ones who make sure the lines are carried out in the correct tones, they decide whether an actor should deliver a line with much conviction or none at all.

The wooden boards that lay outside of the Forum Building are also the responsibility of the directors. Winarchick was assigned the job of transforming the wooden boards into a house for the set.

As he coated the boards with a layer of tan paint, he commented on the play to which he and Kelly, and seven Penn State students, have devoted over a month of their time.

"The play is a satirical, darkly comical look at some very pressing issues. Colonialism — which was the root of the apartheid in Africa. Slavery. The subjugation of class and gender. This campus is diverse, yet there are still stop-the-hate campaigns."

Kelly asserts that it was the strangeness of the script that appealed to him. Perhaps it was not the element of surrealism that convinced Winarchick and Kelly to direct the play, but the sense of urgency behind the characters plights, plights which have not, according to Kelly, changed that much from when time period in which the play is set. Said Kelly: "It brings out the fact that we aren't much better off than we were 100 years ago."