Chloe Wright, Executive Editor
As the whimsical fantasy music played on the speaker, my friends and I scrambled around the dark studio theatre in the Tennessee Williams Center (TWC) to open a padlocked suitcase. In the corner, the escape room game master and creator, Rebecca Liles (C ‘27), waited for us to finish the puzzle within 30 minutes. Our time was 22 minutes, in case you were wondering.
If this scene is familiar, you might have gone to the TWC’s student-run escape room, running exclusively from Saturday, Feb. 1 to Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. According to an email sent by Professor Jim Crawford, most of the performances were “sold out” two days in advance.
Players were tasked with helping a wizard brew a growth potion with materials locked behind leather briefcases and tattered journals. As the game progressed, the player learned the goal of the growth potion: the wizard was simply too short to go on the rides at Dollywood and decided to use magic to bypass the issue. Luckily, the story had a happy ending if everyone finished the escape room on time, and the wizard would be tall enough to go on his favorite rides.
It was a charming and bite-sized event full of Dolly Parton hits and fantastical elements, all just three and a half hours from Pigeon Forge. “It’s about wizards and Dollywood,” Liles said about her project. “Who doesn’t love Dollywood?”
When thinking of escape rooms, the typical, corporation-run experience comes to mind. But it’s the student-run approach that made this small event special.
After a summer full of doing escape rooms with her family, Liles decided to recreate the experience at Sewanee. In the beginning stages of the escape room’s development, she found it surprisingly easy to make. But, the location and technology proved to be an issue. “Have you ever done one of the usual [escape rooms] with the TV monitors? How do I get around the TV situation? And then I was, like, ‘I’m a theatre kid. I can just have actors do it!’”
These actors were students themselves: Jacob Franklin (C ‘27), Rowland Fournier (C ‘27), and Ivy Francis Moore (C ‘26). Each of them played different versions of the wizard, changing roles if the team could finish the growth potion in time. Fournier was humble about his self-described 10-second-long role. He said, “It was nice to feel important.”
The TWC provides students with the opportunity to create small projects, usually performances, in their studio theater. Applications are released every semester, and Liles decided to take the opportunity to apply and describe her budget and vision for the project.
When asked about a possible sequel, Liles was excited at the idea. “I was kind of thinking of it as a one-and-done thing…but I was in a house meeting yesterday, and people were going around saying their highs and lows of the week, and someone said their ‘high’ was the escape room. Someone today told me it was one of the most fun things they’ve done at Sewanee. So, like, I kinda have to do it again!”