Who knew war would bring such hilarity to the stage? As one of Rouge Fest’s many performances during its nine day event, Quake Theater’s “A Girl’s Guide to War” brings just that.

From Boulder, Colorado, Claire Patton stars as Millicent Gulch, an eighth-grader at Waybrough Junior High, performing in her school’s talent show.

On an empty and fully lit stage, music starts to play. Dressed as a French military leader in the late 1700s, with her flashy red coat, flowing blue cape and exceptionally large bicorne, Gulch appears on stage and starts her hilarious interpretive dance, with seductive eyes and rhythmic hips.

Gulch happens to be performing an interpretive dance on the wars of Napoleon Bonaparte with her best friend, Susannah Von Mettenheim, but notices that her best friend isn’t on stage with her.

At this point Gulch has had it and declares her “six, possibly seven, rules of war.” She locks the doors of the theater so none of the other performers would enter and disrupt her wrath.

While explaining these rules, she has a slightly abused stage manager backstage who occasionally comes into the performance, basically becoming her minion in waging war on Von Mettenheim.

The performance becomes interactive with the audience, calling for volunteers to be a part of Gulch’s “posse”. This takes part of Quake Theater’s mission — “by creating original, bold, and stirring theater we play not for our audience, but with our audience.”

As the stage turns a dark blue hue, Gulch also converses with the long dead Napoleon Bonaparte himself, explaining how she has long worshiped him and seems to follow in his footsteps while telling the audience of her rules to war.

By the end of the performance, with Gulch feeling high and mighty about how she is going to declare her war to Von Mettenheim, a phone rings and Gulch’s “best friend” is on the line.

In the end, Gulch had no enemy of her own to be able to wage her war. However, the locked doors of the school theater are being banged on, the students wanting to be let in.

Gulch realizes that she does have the enemies that she wanted. So she has her minion stage manager let the ravaging performers in and start their fight. Gulch calls in the three audience members that volunteered for her posse to come and help fight her war.

Quake Theater’s “A Girl’s Guide to War” left the audience in constant laughter and relatable situations of the common junior high student.