I saw the worst student production I have ever, ever seen. You can tell how serious I am by the redundancy!
It was written, directed, and perfomed by students. Soooooo bad! I even tried to limit how critical I was willing to be when I went in, and while I wouldn't say I had a completely open mind, I was at least attempting to hold my biases in check. The writing violated so many simple rules for what not to do. The dialogue was uncharacterized and preachy, the acting was theatrical (with one person continually slapping their legs and then giving an "oh come on" hand gesture), and the direction should have caught both how bad the writing was and how bad the acting was, but it didn't. So not even that deserves merit to any degree. Probably the worst part was the speech that occurred before the show, which not only outlined the play, but told the audience what they should come away with as a message from the play.