Barron named associate dean of academic records
Inside Furman is published monthly during the school year by the Furman University Department of Marketing and Public Relations. For story ideas, e-mail John Roberts, editor.
Thirty minutes of madness
At 10 a.m. each weekday a strange scene takes place in the Furman Theatre.
A handful of professors and students cluster in the scene shop, an area replete with backdrops, old paintings, tools, wood scraps and stage lights. One of the mounted lights focuses on a worn, battle-punched, black and green dartboard.
Sipping espresso, the contestants gather in the shadow of the board like football players before the pre-game coin toss. A quarter is tossed to determine teams.
Then it begins. An exasperated groan, then the first profanity of the game. And trash-talking that would make a seasoned NBA player blush.
The rules are simple: each two-member team gets 18 turns. Like golf, the lowest score wins. Unlike golf, heckling is permitted . . . even encouraged. Theatre Darts is clearly not a gentleman's game.
The caffeine seems to stoke the competitive fires. Someone, a student maybe, calls Rhett Bryson, the game's senior player, an old fart. Toeing the line, Bryson smiles wryly and raises his weapon - an aluminum-shafted dart with patriotic red, white and blue flights. With an easy flick, Old Glory flies true this morning and finds the low score.
Retrieving his darts, Bryson grins at the heckler. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't have to. In this tiny corner of the university, there are no professors, no students, just competitors.
To the victors go the spoils: an 18-inch plastic trophy and bragging rights for 23 hours and 30 minutes. Theatre darts began in 1976, the same year Faye Dunaway won an Oscar for her role in the movie Network.
The original dartboard was part of the set of The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia. The first game was held shortly after the play closed.
"This has nothing to do with what we do, but it has everything to do with what we do," says department chair Doug Cummins. "It builds a lot of camaraderie here."
Bryson, the self-appointed commissioner of the game, has squirreled away every score sheet - all 3,000 of them. Like a rare and treasured artifact, score sheet 0 and the very first Theatre Arts dartboard are enshrined in a glass case in the department's lobby.
Of the five names on the first scorecard, only Bryson and Jay Oney are still at Furman. Oney signed the sheet as a Furman sophomore, and Bryson was a young faculty member, having come to the university in 1972.
For the record, Oney won that contest and has lost few since - when he's trying. Oney holds the record low score of 35. Par is 72. His aim is precise, his game legendary.
"Jay's a good sport and lets some of the others win sometimes," says Bryson.
On this morning, though, Oney is teaching a class. So others compete for the limelight. The student duo of D.J. Seaman and Lexie Nichols claims the coveted trophy. The scores tallied and the last dart tossed, sanity and civility return. It's 10:30 a.m. To the student competitors, the "old fart" is now "Professor Bryson"
Until tomorrow at 10 a.m.