Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Sweet Home High School theater students will present a variety of one-act plays at 7 p.m. this Friday and Saturday, March 7 and 8, in the auditorium.
The content of the plays varies across genres, from fantasy to drama and comedy.
Three are longer plays, while three are just five- to 10-minute vignettes, drama teacher Alain Brown said.
Among the plays are “Kobo Abe,” or “The Man Who Turned into a Stick.”
The play is an absurd fantasy about death translated from Japanese.
“Split Decision” is a realistic drama, a slice of life, about a man who is preoccupied with his work and his wife who feels alienated.
“Little Red Riding Hood,” is a comedy and satire of the fairy tale.
“Ties,” is a drama translated from Portuguese about a girl who bumps into a stranger while leaving her father’s funeral. The stranger asks her to help him with his tie. Her mother gives her a keepsake, a photo, to remember her father. What she finds in the photo surprises her.
“Chocolate” is a comedy detective story, in the vein of “Colombo.”
“Check Please” is a 13-scene comedy about bad modern dates.
The plays touch a variety of themes, Brown said. “These are all student-chosen plays. They’re all student-directed. I help them here and there, but they’re the ones that are doing the sets, the costumes.”
The casts primarily include drama students, but a couple of students are coming in from outside the classes to help put on the plays, Brown said. Combined, about 23 students are involved in the production.
The production is an interesting experience, senior Dallin Holden said. The students get to focus on much more than just their lines, he said.
“It gives us an appreciation for how much stuff our directors have to go through,” senior Mary Bond said.
The two are involved with the production of “Check Please.”
“We wanted to do something more light,” Holden said.
The scenes depict some disastrous moments in dating, Bond said. “Some of them are bizarre enough, they might have actually happened.”
In one scene, Holden is trying to do the normal date thing, but Bond is listening to a Chicago Bears playoff game on an earpiece, constantly shouting in response to events in the game, things like, “pass the freakin’ ball.”
“I think the kids are pretty excited,” Brown said. “I don’t think they’ve done student-led one-acts.”
The idea was to give them ownership of the plays, he said.
Veteran actors involved with the project include Afton Rodgers, Kathy Wilson, Alex Winslow, Polly Bond and Mary Bond.
Also involved are Bryana Bittner, Justine Calhoon, Marcus Delong, Cody Heeren, Katie Link, Dallin Holden, Amanda Miller, Jonny Penner, Seth Pierce, Brittany Polley, Trevor Shipp, William Stedman, Whitney Stoner, Tristan Terry, Janessa Van Epps, Cameron Vasseur, Jakob Holden and Josh Lowe.
The annual high school play will be selected following this production and presented most likely in early May, Brown said.