On April 20 and 21, the drama department put on two black box performances  in the school’s auditorium.

On Thursday, April 20th, the first drama III class took the stage in the three-act play Our Town written by Thornton Wilder and student-directed by seniors Cassidy McGinty and Max Ploughman. “I feel like our cast succeeded,” McGinty commented on the final performance, “I really think our class rose to the challenge.” Ploughman also added.  “Our Town went a
lot better than I expected it to be.”   According to Ploughman, the cast did not have as much time to prepare and rehearse as they did for the fall black box show, Crazytown.

    According to McGinty, Our Town was fun and incorporating- Ploughman, McGinty, and a student from the other drama III class [Kirsten DiBastiani] having the opportunity to be part of the audience and interact with them. “…that show was supposed to reflect real people. It was supposed to be real life, and you know, real life isn’t exciting or hilarious all the time,” McGinty said.  She added that even through all of this, the cast still managed to break the fourth wall.

“Our Town was definitely a challenging show for our cast,” Senior Elizabeth Eakes revealed, “We had to bring our own emotion.” The show is literary-based, and even though the cast started the year with a comedic and energetic show, they were still able to bring the same energy to the stage with Our Town, a mature and serious performance. The important part is being able to go across the board and be able to perform all sorts of material.

Junior Abby Renzulli, the main costume designer for the show, added that the final performance had a beautiful outcome. “That day there was a thunderstorm… when [the third act] was happening and I just thought it was so beautiful,” she accounted. The third act is about death (which isn’t as dark as it seems), and the sound of the rain and the thunder coming through the building really made the show beautiful, according to Renzulli.

Senior Allison Taylor, who played one of the main characters, also commented on the show, “…we all pulled it together and got through it and had a really great and moving senior show.”

The next night, Friday, April 21, the other drama III class took the stage in You Can’t Take it With You, a comedic three-act play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and student-directed by senior Katy Abernethy and junior Delaney Bosworth. “The final performance was a little bit hectic…a good bit of the show was improvised, but it was funny improvisation…” Abernethy commented.

The cast made the directors proud of the show, Bosworth recalled. She also added that it all came together in the end, “…we had to throw in an extra cast member because one of our members could not make it to our show the day of,” she also recounted.

Senior Molly Koerber, an actress in the play, spoke about procrastination. “…there is not a very good product that comes from procrastination,” Koerber said, “but I think we really came together as an ensemble and as a community.”  The fact that a lot of it was improvised was what made it so funny and interesting to watch, according to Koerber. “I think it kind of always gets hard when you get down to the end of the year…but we still stayed motivated through it.” Senior Kirsten DiBastiani commented on her cast’s performance. She recalled that she was a little nervous that the cast wasn’t going to be memorized or ready in time, but in the end the cast did pull through and put on a humorous show, one that the audience did enjoy. “I rate it eleven out of ten, would recommend,” commented DiBastiani.