For the first time in school history, the One-Act Play advanced to the Bi-District contest. Only three of the eight casts advanced from the district competition held at the school, Saturday, March 28.

“It was the best performance they ever had,” theatre director Stephanie Smith said. “Everything was in sync and it was just awesome. Hands down one of the best days of my life.”

This year’s entry A Nice Family Gathering, a story about a man who wanted to tell his wife he loved her, so he visits his family as a ghost on Thanksgiving Day. As part of the competition, the cast only has seven minutes to set up, 40 minutes for the show and seven minutes to remove the set.

“During rehearsal, we often ran over time, our time was very inconsistent and it became a large cause of stress in my life,” junior Brian Robinson said. “We always had to be cognizant of our time and it made it hard to focus on the task at hand, but at competition we just forgot all about it and did the show the best we could and everything just fell into place.”

Four students received awards including seniors Taylor Criswell and Weston Beckham making the All-Star Cast. Senior Logan Fish was named Honorable Mention All-Star Cast and junior Tyler Roberge made the All-Star Technical Crew.

“It’s really gratifying to win an award in such a great district because it shows all the work, not only I have done, but everyone else has done also,” Criswell said. “Every show has flubs, but there was nothing that we weren’t able to recover from immediately.”

The Bi-District competition is Friday, April 10 beginning at 3 p.m. at Hendrickson.  The OAP cast will perform around 5:30 or 6:30 p.m. The competition is open for anyone to attend.

“I feel amazing for us this year,” Smith said. “It’s a bigger deal because not only did we advance but we made history and I’m so proud of these kids. If anyone ever asks the first time we advanced, it’ll be this cast.”