One Acts become big crowd pleasers

Micheal Simmons, Sports Editor

The sound of laughter and amusement filled the drama room and little theater as several different actors and directors put on plays, comedies and skits all chosen by the performing students themselves. One by one spectators and audience members filled every seat in the drama room, up to the point where spectators began standing in the corners of the room just to have a good view of the show.

“Quite a bit of preparation goes into a show like this,” junior Marlena Hummel said. “One acts are typically smaller because they are just one act, but you still have to find the perfect cast that you want for your show. You have to meet with your directs about specific blocking that you want and it really all narrows down to what you want and what your vision is.”

The opening act did more than just kept the packed house entertained, it had them bursting out with laughter.  ‘Murderers, Anonymous’, written and directed by Erin Hackenberg, involved a few surprises for the audience. Throughout the show, the character Maxine, played by freshman Indigo Belanger, kept pointing randomly into the audience and accusing them of being the murderer, despite them not having any clue what was happening. It wasn’t revealed until the end of the show that there was an actor hidden right in the middle of themto the dismay of the audience. In the final seconds of the act, junior Henry Shinstock stepped down from the audience to finish out the scene. This came as a crowd pleaser to the audience and drew in several more people. As the acts went on, more and more people attended and by the final act, the door ways were filled with spectators.

“Having a full house is always a good thing,” Hummel said. “Always boosts morale with the actors and directors because we are all really nervous, especially the directors who wrote their own because we are putting ourselves out they’re for everybody to see.”

While ‘Murderers, Anonymous’ stood out, there were also a total of eight other acts that students performed. Including an act that had no script, no game plan. Everything that was presented to the audience, was thought of on the spot.

“For improvisation we meet every Wednesday for about two hours after school,” senior Trenton Lopez said. “We play a variety of mental exercise games that require different things, like one game requires us to think about how can condense a scene very quickly, others require us to make up certain different places, and it’s just a lot of trial and error and seeing what works and doesn’t as well as relationships between all the different actors on stage and respect between said actors for said scenes. It’s just thinking on your feet and getting faster at it.”

As the drama department turns the page after one acts, they being to pick a show for them to perform at state in January. One Acts ended being an undoubted success for all the actors and directors involved and certainly for the spectators.