On Feb. 13, the Thespian Society will be holding a dessert theater in the Black Box Theater, starting at 7:00 p.m. All students can get tickets through a member of the Thespian Society, the student store, or by emailing [email protected], and they will cost ten dollars.
The officers of the drama club this year, seniors Samarra Wertz, Camille Krug, and Owen Carmel wanted to create something that has not been before, and eventually settled on the idea of a dessert theater.
“I’ve done dessert theater in the community before, and I thought it’d be a really fun thing we could do, and we could cater it towards a younger audience and then students in the school, so it’d be fun for the whole community,” Wertz said.
All desserts will be provided by two different bakeries rather than the school, and will offer a variety to choose from. Each person will have three desserts while they watch the show.
“Lisa Becker, who owns a bakery in Altoona, will be providing half of the desserts, and then Crystal Mitchell, who owns Mitchell farms, who also is a baker, will be providing some of the other desserts,” Wertz said. “We’re thinking of a variety of cookies and cupcakes and different kinds of cakes.”
The director of this show, senior Attison Batten, has been giving notes, changes, ideas, and the overall direction of this production to the cast.
“I’m directing “When Bad Things Happen to Good Actors,’” Attison Batten said. “It’s a spoof of The Wizard of Oz. The show kind of goes wrong with people not knowing their lines, missed cues, tech issues. It’s very funny.”
The Thespian Society isn’t finished with the Dessert Theater, but progress continues as they inch closer to performance day. There’s still more to be done as they prepare, such as dress rehearsals and memorizing lines.
“We blocked half the show, which might not sound like a lot, but we had a lot of setbacks,” Batten said. “I was on vacation, so we’re about to really start getting into the meat of it right now.”
The Thespian Society is independent, allowing members to work together without any outside assistance.
“It’s [the dessert theater] student led entirely, so we haven’t had any like help from Mr. Cossitor,” Carmel said. “It’s been us getting together, rehearsing ourselves and doing whatever we want to with it.”
“A lot of us like doing improv, so we were looking for more opportunities to do that style of the theater,” Carmel said. “We decided a good way to draw in some extra cash for our department and for us to go out and just have a good time with that thing was to just have another event like this.”
