(MICHAEL DANSER/The Daily Campus)

Men wore eyeliner and girls were thrown into the air during this year’s Sing Song competition

Hosted annually by SMU’s Program Council, Sing Song is an event that demonstrates the dancing, singing and script-writing skills of different groups on campus.

This year, each group chose a music genre to incorporate into their play. Genres spanned time periods and cultures, including soundtracks, Motown, Broadway and Latin.

The first place award went to Alpha Chi Omega and Beta Theta Pi for their soundtrack-themed show. Second place went to Gamma Phi Beta and Lyle School of Engineering for their jazz-themed murder mystery skit. Delta Gamma and Kappa Alpha Order won third place with a Motown-themed act. First, second and third place awards were decided by judges chosen by Program Council.

This year, a text-your-vote system was used to gauge audience response, which counted for 10 percent of the final scoring.

During dress rehearsal Thursday night, each group voted for other groups in categories. Best costume went to Beta Upsilon Chi (BYX) and Delta Delta Delta. Best backdrop, choreography and overall performance went to Gamma Phi Beta and Lyle School of Engineering.

Sing Song 2011 opened with a video consisting of interviews with directors from each group. The montage, which was serious in nature, was followed by an interpretive dance by Nick Cains, emcee for the event.

The first act of the night was performed by Tri-Delta and BYX. Their genre was funk, The story revolved around one group’s recovery of “The Funk,” which was stolen by the Boogie Monster Man. The good guys were aided in their efforts to recover “The Funk” by a group of divas, the girls of Tri Delta. The act concluded in a funk-off, during which both sides ended with a truce.

This was followed by the Motown-themed play of the Delta Gamma sorority and the Kappa Alpha Order fraternity. The plot was revolved around Laura, a popular schoolgirl being pursued by Jack, the stereotypical jock. Laura received love letters from Jack, who was using Steve, a nerd, to write the letters for him. Steve, whose writings reflected his own true feelings for Laura, spent the duration of the play trying to find a way to confess his love for Laura.

Next came the Broadway-based production of the Pi Beta Phi sorority and the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. In this act, the son of a legendary New York City mobster put his inherited career as a gangster on hold to pursue a career on Broadway, a decision that ultimately unites the mob and theatre communities.

Later in the night, Alpha Chi Omega and Beta Theta Pi preformed the winning soundtracked-themed play. This play, which included a mock-interpretation of SMU President R. Gerald Turner, incorporated a message of the inter-school unity.

Men from the Cox School of Business competed against women of the Meadows School of the Arts for extra funding, which was the result of what mock-President Turner called “over-fundraising.”

To put a twist into the story, the Cox and Meadows students set their differences aside and worked together to win the additional funding, ultimately losing to the students of the Perkins School of Theology, who were not portrayed by anybody on stage.

The students of Senatus Populusque Romanus (Virginia-Snider honors students) took the stage with a Latin-themed play revolving around a mockup of Wellness I, a class that all SMU students are required to take in order to graduate. Students in Wellness I were given opportunities to introduce themselves and despite personality differences, social connections were formed.

The play highlighted the importance of meeting different kinds of people and not initially judging others based on outward appearances.

The series of plays concluded with the ladies of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority and the students of Lyle School of Engineering performing a jazz-style murder mystery in which a TCU student frames a SMU student. Vivian, the TCU student, accuses Stella, the SMU student, of killing her father. Stella is later proven innocent by private detective Jimmy, who rekindles their old relationship and ends the play with a long, dramatic kiss.

While the judges deliberated in a secret room, professional magician and SMU student Trigg Burrage delivered a captivating and jaw-dropping magic act.

Burrage’s act was followed by a series of dance routines performed by SMU’s country-western dance team, the Mustang Mavericks.