Medford revives its one-act play program
Students at Medford are happy to have one-act play back, even if it led to an on-stage fight. Granted this dispute was part of the script in the play Swagger.
Performing is something Savannah Zabel has wanted to do for a long time. “I was telling everyone: my family members, my friends, I was going to be on stage. It’s been my dream since I was in third grade to be on stage.”
Fellow eighth grader Kylie Lewis was happy to help backstage and work on lines with the actors. Asked whether she might step in front of the curtain in the future. “Maybe, if I can get confident to get over my stage fright,” she said.
Zabel dealt with that. “I was extremely nervous. But just knowing I had my best friend and some of my other friends and my father in the audience, it was comforting.”
The play features a misunderstanding about whether a teenager steals an item from a store and leads to a fight. Rehearsals helped modify the confrontation into its final form said stage manager Ella Bettner. “I was really excited to do the fight scene. When we completed it there wasn’t much of a fight scene. But then we put together the actors running around stage and chasing each other.”
Zabel played the part of Jordan, the teenager. “So, I was the kid getting tackled. At one point she had me pinned to the ground… I’m struggling to say my lines while I’m still looking at the audience.”
After one-act play disappeared at Medford – a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic – English teacher Randy Domstrand says music teacher Ollie Schmidt pushed for its resumption. “She had a fresh perspective, she was excited and she wanted to see it happen. She hounded me for the better part of a year. She got me to believe.”
He says starting a theater club last spring was the first step. “There was enough interest, we had auditions…and we were able to cast it with an understudy. I’m so excited to bring this back. For a lot of kids that are involved in theater, some of them don’t fit anywhere else. So, to find a place where they have friends and people they can hang out with, it’s a big deal,” said Domstrand.
He feels confident that Medford can put on a small musical in the fall and stressed that auditions would take place this spring.
Domstrand says high schoolers Vera Scheer and Lorann Skorr have taken it upon themselves to start a theater program at the elementary school level.
Lewis encourages others to join. “You make a lot of new friends here and you get to have a lot of fun. And they give you snacks. And they’re the best (in reference to the teachers).”
Bettner believes the day could come for her to perform. “Just seeing the actors who (performed) in this play and how they helped each other out when they forgot their lines and how they worked together.”