To gain credit for Theater I, the classes participated in a public performance. The students auditioned, were assigned a part to play and given lines to memorize. The different classes came together to perform on one night, April 21.
The theme for this year’s plays was Shakespeare with each of the three classes performing different Shakespeare-related plays, including Drop Dead Juliet, Will and Whimsy, and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. These plays were all good in their own aspects, but some fell short while others stood out.
Director Jennifer Mankovsky’s first period class, who performed Will and Whimsy, started off the night in an interesting way. Instead of doing a play all at once like most plays are done, this one is a collection of short scenes, with a maximum of four actors on stage at one time. This set up the opportunity to have these split up throughout the night. Out of the nine short scenes a few were flawed, forgetting lines and laughing at their mistakes. Considering this was many student’s first public performance, they did very well. The scenes brought smiles to the audience through portraying characters that ranged from romantics that couldn’t find the words to say “I love you,” to three year olds building a sand castle, to three friends fighting to the death over a candy bar.
The next class to go was Mankovsky’s fifth period class with Drop Dead Juliet. This show flowed together smoothly, with only two minor hiccups—a character missed an entrance and a pillar fell over. This show was an interesting twist on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet gets fed up with dying all the time and turns the other characters into women. The play was good, but some of the characters fell flat. Despite this, the actors were prepared and stayed composed during the minor discrepancies.
The last play, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare performed by Stephanie Smith’s fourth period class, was the strongest. These kids didn’t seem like it was their first time to perform at all. They had such energy that it woke up the crowd as the actors pulled them completely into Shakespeare. This play fits every play Shakespeare ever wrote into a 40-minute time period. They did this by shortening the dramas, doing all 16 comedies at one time, a football game for the histories and rapping Othello in unison. This play ends with Hamlet. They performed this play repeatedly, getting faster and faster until they eventually did it backwards. Overall, the final play was the highlight of the night.
