The advanced Drama III and IV class got a chance to direct a one-act play while also making the sets and costumes.
The show took place on May 20, and there were two shows in total. The first play, “Our Place,” was directed by senior Maxwell Tienken. The show was about a dock that everyone in the play sees as their place where they experience all different kinds of emotions. Overall, both plays were great to watch, and I look forward to seeing future productions where the students direct and compose these plays.
The play had some humor, heartbreak and sad stories. For example, the drowning of a younger sister who didn’t know how to swim, or a mother struggling with dementia and a daughter struggling to take care of her.
The play had the right amount of humor and seriousness to it, and it was interesting to watch. The actors were very convincing during the important scenes, such as the breakups or sad scenes in general. The actors’ acting during those scenes was really good and really sold the idea that they were genuinely feeling sad or distraught.
Overall, the entire play was wonderful to watch, and while it was not all funny and contained a lot of seriousness, I think the acting was great and so was the writing and set, which made the play overall memorable for me and enjoyable to watch.
After intermission, the next play was “Brothers Grimm.” It was directed by senior Olivia Reif, with help from assistant director junior Nicholas Serano. The play was about two narrators who are princesses, attempting to recreate all 209 fairy tale stories accurately and how they were first made.
This play was my overall favorite out of the two. It was purely comedic, and the actors interacted with the audience, which kept everybody interested.
The actors broke the fourth wall a lot during the play, in ways like saying the actors’ real names rather than their characters’ names. They made a whole side story on how the rest of the actors were sick and weren’t able to act in the Cinderella fairytale and it ended up being a one-man act with junior Anica Gaggar being the one running around the stage trying to play all the characters, which was very funny to me and the laughing audience.
The entire production was great to watch, my mom and I enjoyed it a lot, and the comedy in “Brothers Grimm,” such as making fun of the audience in a playful way and breaking the fourth wall, was extremely funny to both me and my mom. At the end, the entire production had a proper send-off to Bary Woodruff, the Drama teacher who was retiring. They gave Woodruff a fishing vest with pins of every play he had done with Woodside on the vest, which was an amazing way to end the production. I think you should look out for future productions or you’ll be missing out on something great.
