“Exercises in Style” is the next production from the School of Theater and Dance. It opens Thursday and runs through Sunday in the Stevens Building Corner Theater. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 2:00 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $5 each and are available only at the door.

This show’s history stems from one man: Raymond Queneau.

“Queneau was a philosophy student, poet, briefly a surrealist and later a publisher,” director Robert Schneider said.

He worked for the acclaimed Gallimard publishing house, and, as the story goes, “one day he experienced [a] story, and to amuse himself, wrote nine different versions of it. Later, he wrote nine more, and he ended up with 99 versions of the same story,” Schneider said.

“Exercises in Style” is a reflection of that basic concept. In essence, the show’s story is quite simple, as Stage Manager Bridget Carey explained: “It’s about a guy who gets on a bus and something happens to him.”

The cast performs that story 29 times, 29 ways. There are different styles one can utilize to present a story. For example, there is the Elizabethan style of theater, and the sitcom is hailed as one of the most popular styles in television. This show employs the use of distinct styles people see every day to shape the story.

“We want to amuse and divert and inform our audience,” Schneider said.

Senior theater studies major Kristen Helmers said, “I would say the show is a marathon: you get as much as you possibly can as quickly as we can present it to you.”

Stacie Wieland is a movie critic for the Northern Star.