The Montezuma-Cortez High School drama department will present “The Student-Directed One-Act Festival” Jan. 29 and 30.
The four plays are a mix of comedy, philosophy of death, and Shakespearian spoof.
“The audience can expect a wide variety, from speak-easy scenes, to superheroes and mob-boss plots,” said drama teacher Nick Sandner.
One-act plays are put on every other year by students in the advanced theater studies class. This time, Sandner focused on building strong directing skills.
“We worked a lot on what it means to direct, all the way from picking a play, to casting, auditions, and rehearsals,” he said.
Students Nicole Shock and Cassidy Livengood are directing “The Desperate Housewives of Shakespeare.”
The play brings together all the women in Shakespeare plays in a revenge plot against Shakespeare.
“He belittles them, so they plan to do the same to him,” Shock said. “It is a comedy with a lot of laughs and weird twists and turns.”
Student David Gonzales-Overton wrote and will direct the play “A Salesman of Death,” an original plot inspired by the famous play of a similar name and the Yorick scene in “Hamlet.”
“It’s an allegory of the acceptance of death, that it’s something you have to come to terms with,” Gonzales-Overton said. “A door-to-door salesman sells death using flashbacks from a girl’s life.”
Seeing and directing the first rehearsal was a moment to remember.
“I could not get over that these characters I had imagined were coming to life onstage,” he said. “It has the effect that I was going for.”
His friend Kaleb Burris is the main actor.
“I’ve got a great costume,” he said. “David wants it to be deep philosophy, but I’m in improv so I can see how it could be a tragic comedy as well.”
The other plays are “The Superhero Support Group” directed by Grace Higley and Tatianna Mahan-Higgins, and “The Creepy Corpse of Cal Capone” directed by Madison Echols.
The plays run at the M-CHS Vavak auditorium on Jan. 29 at 7 p.m., and on Jan. 30 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for students, and free for age 5 and under.
