The drama department’s practices are currently underway for the fall play “Monty Python’s Edukational Show,” leading up to its performance on Nov. 7-8.
Progress continues as the club members and advisers participate in acting, practicing, creating, building and painting in preparation for the show. The play will consist of a number of sketches from the 70s show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” instead of having one full story occurring. There is no main character for one actor to have as this play consists of multiple skits, so most actors have more than one role within the play.
“I’m looking forward to performing the Spanish Inquisition [skit], but I’m most excited to see [the] argument clinic or silly walk [skits] because those ones are really fun,” junior Gabriella Sparacino said.
As a club, each group has their own job. Whether it’s acting, set building, set painting, costumes or props, everyone contributes in one way or another.
“We’ve got all these students [who are] part of backstage crew where they make the sets and the props, costumes and all those different groups have to work together, so you really learn how to collaborate as a team with a lot of really different types of people,” adviser Ben Cossitor said. “We have people that love to sew and love to paint and love to build, in addition to people that like to act, [and] all those tend to have different personality types.”
The actors have a responsibility to work on all of the roles they are given. Even with this responsibility, the actors feel confident about acting for the fall play.
“I do feel pretty confident because I grew up watching ‘Monty Python,’” Sparacino said. “I’ve got a grasp of how the characters are and how the troupe worked and did their scenes.”
According to Cossitor, choosing who gets each role within the play can be tricky, especially from the number of auditions from the students to the limited number of spots for roles.
“We have a lot of talent to pick from, which is a good and bad thing,” Cossitor said. “It makes it that we have a lot of options for different roles, but we have so many good people that we don’t have enough leading parts for.”
Acting, set building, set painting, costumes and props are crews that require team effort in order to get things done. A role that one student has is the drama club president, and they have their own responsibilities.
“We will help run meetings and help with passing out papers and stuff like that at meetings,” Camille Krug said. “The big drama club officer duty, I would say, is at the beginning of the year, me, Owen [Carmel] and Samara [Wertz] got together with Mr. Cossitor, and we discussed different activities that we want to do throughout the year.”
When the performances start in November and the actors and set are ready for an audience to see, those who helped with the creation of the play get to see their hard work in the performances.
“It’s a big responsibility, and it’s nice to put a lot of effort into something because some shows I put so much effort into, and it’s nice to see that pay off in the end when we get to put on the production,” Krug said.
The stage crews work hand in hand and all of their work combined completes the set as a whole. David Borst, primarily in charge of the set crew, contributes to the creation and construction of the set for the fall play.
“I am primarily in charge of what we would call set crew, and we further break that down into the construction and painting,” Borst said. “Some kids are more into the actual building of stuff, and then we have other people who paint and get more into the art side. We kind of all work together, but we have that division because some days we call in people to build, and some days we call in people to paint.”
There are other crews such as props, costumes, sounds, lights, and makeup that all contribute to the set or stage in some way. When all crews finish their jobs, they put together the set in its entirety and get to watch the actors adapt with the environments the crews have created for those actors.
“It’s really neat when you see the actors interact with what we built, and when it all comes together with the lighting and the sound, and it makes magic, all these people coming together to make something really amazing,” Borst said.
