On Halloween, the Theater II class performed an original play in celebration of the spooky season. The play, a ten-minute story called The Good, The Bad, and The Spooky, is about kids who have their candy stolen by bullies on Halloween before a friendly zombie comes to their rescue.
Performing Arts Department Chair Mr. Darren Hengst challenged his students to develop an original Halloween-themed play. On previous Halloweens, he had his students read stories to lower school students; this year, he wanted to get his students more involved with this tradition.
“I had the students all gather in groups and come up with two to three story pitches that they presented to the class, and they all voted on which one we’d like to move forward with,” Mr. Hengst said. “We then broke the story down into beats (segments of the play) and each group took a beat and wrote the dialogue for it, so every single student had a stake in the script. We then turned that into a working script and cast the roles.”
The Theater II students chose to focus on friendship as the play’s theme. Students knew that the play had to appeal to a young audience.
“I only recommended to them that they remain[ed] mindful of the audience’s age when they were writing because we wanted to make sure that everyone understands the relationships and the challenges of the characters presented in the show,” Mr. Hengst said.
In preparation, the class read through the script to make sure that everyone understood their assignments and that there were no plot holes. Before performing the show, they rehearsed the play and worked out the technical elements, such as lighting and sound, in Centennial Hall.
Their dedication paid off as it was well-received and widely enjoyed by the audience. Mr. Hengst and the Theatre II class remain hopeful that this will become a new tradition, helping to build connections and camaraderie across school divisions.
“It was an extremely fun process for the boys,” Mr. Hengst said, “and I’m excited they had an opportunity to perform in front of the younger students.”