By THERESA TAYLOR
Staff Writer
Communications major John MacDonald, a 22-year old senior, has been making his mark on the Saint Rose campus by writing, directing, and performing in musicals, developing a murder mystery web series, and forming a student club to help promote friendship.
MacDonald, who doesn’t watch television, does like going on YouTube and Hulu. On these sites he watched murder mystery shows like Desperate Housewives and Pretty Little Liars, and decided that he wanted to do something similar, but not on such a large scale. He had heard about web series a couple of years ago, and that gave him the idea to start his own; a murder mystery series called Rules of Runford that takes place at the fictional Runford University.
The show is filmed on and around the Saint Rose campus, and given that this is MacDonald’s senior year, he figured that this was his last chance to film it. MacDonald has recruited much of the show’s cast from the Saint Rose student body.
“I had auditions for it, but from the past two years of doing musicals, I have pretty much the same people,” said MacDonald. He also uses Facebook to recruit actors for auditions. He did not realize that he was going to do the show until a month or two before he holding auditions. MacDonald said he would have been more nervous if he had time to think about it, but that having a cast and crew rely on him forced him to do what he did.
“I kind of like the TV show Glee,” said MacDonald. “I don’t like the story line, but I do like that often they’ll have a positive message in the show and I think that’s really awesome to convey that through media.” MacDonald wanted to incorporate life lessons into his web series, especially for freshmen.
Rules of Runford episodes have addressed important issues such as cheating and drinking. Of the drinking life lesson he put in one of the episodes, MacDonald said that freshmen often, “go out to parties and they drink, but some people might not feel comfortable drinking. They still want to hang out with their friends, so I have a line in the show about just drinking soda and pretending like you’re drinking. If you have a cup in your hand, no one is going to be questioning you about it. I wanted to include little things like that, so that someone watching the show might think, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea!’”
What are some life lessons that MacDonald has learned at Saint Rose? “I feel that when you come to college, you learn so much more than just your major,” said MacDonald. “The biggest thing I learned is how much you can accomplish. I had no idea that I would end up writing musicals and TV shows.”
MacDonald, who has written some shows on his own, has a writing team now that consists of four people: Kelly Pfeister and Regina Iannizzotto, who are on the show, Soozey Walensky, and Meagan Corbett, who helped him with other musicals in the past. The team will brainstorm ideas or sometimes sit and write the script together.
There are two seasons of Rules of Runford. The fall semester of college is considered season one, with spring semester comprising season two. In the series, there are three main characters who don’t know each other at first, but they are part of two linked, evolving mysteries in the show.
The first mystery is what happened to a young woman named Taylor, who first goes missing, and then who is later found dead. The question is: was she murdered, and if so, who did it? The second mystery involves the three girls who are the main characters, who are connected not only in the murder, but in another way that they don’t realize, which will be explained in the season two finale.
Rules of Runford stars Jolene Pierce, Camille Grubbs, Kelly Pfeister, Abby Naumowicz, Jessica Lamoureaux, Becca Bien, Lori Blosser, Myles Clendenin, Sarah Abelson, Regina Iannizzotto, and Kyra Fitzgerald. It is narrated by Nicole Dama.
MacDonald films every week, but the show will be on hiatus over winter break. He spends about two or three hours writing each script and planning what is going on in each episode, and then schedules everyone to meet to do the shooting. The cast and crew submit their schedules to him so he knows their availability. There are occasional conflicts and rearrangements, but MacDonald said that people have been good about showing up.
As for his new-found celebrity status, MacDonald humbly said that, “It’s fun to do the show. I hear people talking about the show and I really like that.” He has a reality TV show in the works, Project Runford, where five contestants compete for a role on the Rules of Runford. The show has wrapped up filming and will air over winter break in late December or early January.
MacDonald has also written and performed in several musicals here at Saint Rose. He’s been performing in musicals since fourth grade, but he was usually only in the ensemble, never the star. When MacDonald became involved in the Saint Rose Environmental Club during his sophomore year, he wanted to host a concert to raise money for an environmental cause. He thought it would be cute to call the concert Sustainability: the Musical, and before he knew it, it became just that, and he was auditioning characters and writing songs for a musical about going green and being environmentally friendly.
MacDonald’s next musical, Industry Pink, about self- esteem and body image, was set in a fashion school as the fashion industry is all about, “being thin… and demanding about appearances.”
These shows are a very quick process, with the time between conception and performance usually only being a few months. MacDonald likes writing for fun, quirky characters. When MacDonald first came to Saint Rose, he was a Music Industry major but, ironically, started writing his musicals after switching to Communications.
His musical inspirations, for which he’s sometimes taken heat, are, “pop-dance-synth stuff” that is not really technical, but is upbeat and makes him happy. He likes his musicals to be dance-oriented with strong beats and a pop sound that makes them unique.
MacDonald isn’t sure what he wants to do once he graduates; there are so many things that he’d like to do, and with his talents, he will have a lot of choices. He wants to continue doing musicals, but would also enjoy working on the set of a TV show or in an art department with video. Another option he is looking at is going to grad school and then work on a college campus.
His next musical, coming up in the spring, is a murder mystery called Roger That: the Sleuthsical. The musical is about a circus lion tamer who gets murdered, and the ring master gets framed for it. The ring master then hires a famous detective named Roger Rogers, from the Roger Rogers Detective Agency, to help solve the crime. This time around, MacDonald is looking to have a set built, having previously only used props, and he is also looking to have the score performed by a live band, to make the show seem more authentic.
MacDonald also founded a campus club called Outside the [Box], inspired by talks he had with friends about people sitting alone in the dining hall. He noticed how people won’t usually go over and sit down with some they don’t know and start talking. He wanted to break down that vibe, thinking what a super way that would be for people to meet new friends. The club’s mission is to promote positive thinking, increase self-esteem, and build a stronger college community. Some inventive things they’ve done include posting positive messages on sticky notes they post around the Saint Rose campus. They also sponsor events that include a speed friending, similar to speed dating. The participants were then entered into a raffle, and two names would win a gift card together, promoting friendship and bonding.
One amazing fact about the busy MacDonald, who is also an RA, is that he faithfully gets eight hours of sleep every night.
You can watch Rules of Runford HERE.
A few extra Runford University t-shirts are available for $10 each. To order one, e-mail MacDonald at macdonaldj086@strose.edu.
