North Harford is welcoming back its first fall play since the pandemic shut everything down. This year, the play will be entirely student-run. The team running the play are juniors Lucy Heisey and Alex Manzari, and seniors Kira Holt, Amelia Joyner, and Lilianna McGraw. The play will be on November 21 and 22, which is a Thursday and Friday, in the auditorium.
Heisey stated, “For our first playback, we decided to go with one that leaned more into comedy. So we went with The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon by Don Zolidis.” She continues, “The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon is a bunch of the fairytales everyone knows, modernized and mashed together.”
According to Playscript, “It’s a wild, free-form comedy with lots of audience participation and madcap fun. Two narrators attempt to recreate all 209 of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm in a wild, fast-paced extravaganza.”
It’s still very early in the process, but the team has started blocking, memorizing lines, and building sets according to Holt. Heisey mentions, “So far, the process has been very successful. Me and my fellow officers are working hard to make sure this goes smoothly.”
Holt adds, “But the most difficult thing is scheduling and finding availability that works for everyone.”
Auditions were held on September 18, 19, and 20, in the Blackbox. Students auditioning had to audition in front of the officers.
The reason why there hasn’t been a fall play despite COVID-19 was because there was no teacher available to do one. So, the officers got together and made time, according to Holt. Despite the production being student-run, there is still a supervisor behind the scenes to let them use the school facilities.
Heisey stated, “I wanted to be a part of this because I’ve been involved [in theatre] my whole high school career, and want to make sure the next year’s [play] will get a good starting pad to hopefully expand even more.”
Holt stated, “ I wanted to be a part of this because I love the arts and am happy to expand and get more experience. But they also needed someone to step up, so I offered.”
