The 32nd Annual Night of Student One-Act Plays

Denise Soriano | March 26, 2023 | Arts & EnterTAINMENT

From March 2 to March 4, Stanton College Preparatory School’s Drama Club hosted its 32nd Annual Night of Student One-Act Plays. This year, the four plays featured were "RGHS," "Good Times," "For Fortitude's Sake," and "Who Done Did It?" each following dramatically different stories and effectively making the audience feel anything from jovial to nostalgic.

"RGHS," following a brilliant mad scientist and their test subjects, started the night off with countless laughs, with the audience involvement making it a fun and interactive experience. "Good Times" touched many people’s hearts, as it portrayed a friend group of seniors on the day before their graduation, reminiscing on their “good times” throughout high school. “For Fortitude’s Sake” featured only two actors, yet their performance built two strong, distinct personalities that captivated the audience. The closing act, "Who Done Did It?" was a creative parody hoping to stray from the typical murder mystery, and succeeding. Overall, the show was a hit with the audience and displayed the talent of Stanton’s drama department.

 As I had the pleasure of attending the production, I noticed the cast and crew continued to emphasize that each play is written, directed, produced, and acted by students. Throughout the night, the audience heard this repeated multiple times, but I wanted to truly understand the work put in to making these plays come to life. Each of the following interviews will give a behind-the-scenes of many different aspects of putting the production together.

The first person I spoke to was this year’s junior producer, LouisaElena Elias-Sowers, who oversaw the whole process of the production and shadowed the senior producer in order to take over next year.

Denise Soriano: How does it feel to have the torch passed on to you for next year’s One-Acts?

LouisaElena Elias-Sowers: I can't say anything other than it's just exciting and I'm so grateful. Jordan Grossman, who's the senior producer for this year's One-Acts, I'm so happy that she trusted me to pass this on and I'm really excited to get started and to be able to take what I've learned this year and apply and keep traditions going.

DS: How did you get involved with this year’s One-Acts?

LES: With One-Acts, I originally tried to do writing, and they announced that they were collecting for writers before winter break and I was like, “I’ll just write a play and it’ll get produced,” but that didn’t happen. Then I realized that the next deadline that was coming up was the directors’ application, and the application was super fun, it had questions like, “If you were a potato, how would you like to be cooked?” or, “Write a short paragraph involving this person and this person and this person.” It was really interesting to me, so I did it and got in! I co-directed a One-Act play written by a senior who graduated last year called “Swing, You Sinners.”

DS: What did you find most rewarding about producing this year?

LES: I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I think it’s just watching kids grow, because as a producer you get something of a bird’s eye view on the whole production, and you get to see kids figure things out. When you’re directing you get to see actors figure out, “Oh, this is a perfect way to do this monologue!” But as [a] producer, you get to see the costume designer realize, “This color is perfect,” or you see the directors learn something about the process that just sort of makes sense, not just in One-Acts,  but in life in general. The moments when you see their faces light up with realization is just fantastic.

DS: What challenges have you faced in preparing for One-Acts?
LES: I think that this year is the year that I just learn and pick up the tricks, but the biggest challenge I think was communication because you're working with a lot more people, different types of people, so you have to learn, in order to do your job effectively, how to talk to people and figure out what ways are the best to communicate, because you need to have unity. So I think it's just communication, whether it's between me and Jordan, me and the directors, or me and Mr. Grove. I’ve learned a lot about how I need to improve, learning about different types of people and how to communicate with them.

DS: What advice would you give someone who wants to produce or what advice would you give to the junior producer next year?
LES: You don’t have to have a specific thing, you don’t have to have directed or acted, but experience is really useful. What I’m looking for is someone who has a good understanding of how theater works and how to put on a production. For advice for anyone who’s thinking about it or is curious, it’s not like there’s just one trait that’s going to make you a good or bad producer, it’s a culmination of several skills and talents. I think that really if you just know how to look at someone and say, “There’s something in you, let’s find out together and work on it,” and help other people do what they do best, then you’re set. I feel like that’s what it’s really about.

DS: What do you hope audiences take away from the production this year?

LES: This year, because our audience is mainly students and their parents, it’s just sort of like, “You can do anything.” One-Acts is completely student run, written, directed, produced, and acted. Students wrote these plays, every single one was written by a student, every single movement on stage, and you can do that too! Not just in theater, but every single costume was put together by students, lights, all that technical stuff, and I think that’s just absolutely fantastic. So I think that if the audience comes to the show and sees that, “Wait, this was a good show, the story was told effectively, and this was completely students?” and just understanding that you can participate in that too.

DS: Did you have a favorite play this year and why?

LES: I really do think that all of them had several aspects that were really cool. I’m biased a bit, so I’m not going to share my favorite. But I will say that all of them were absolutely fantastic. "RGHS" was just hilarious, we had two plays written by the same author. [Nicolas DeAssis] is amazing, his humor is always spot on, absolutely fantastic, and the directors tackled both of the plays, "Who Done Did It?" and "RGHS," really well to get that story, that humor, across. "For Fortitude's Sake" was a tough one, but the maturity of the actors really helped the lines shine, and in "Good Times," the staging was so incredibly well done to show that sort of reminiscing. I can say confidently, all of them had something that was just fantastic.

The next person I interviewed was junior Nicolas DeAssis, who wrote both "RGHS" and "Who Done Did It?"

Denise Soriano: What inspired you to write these plays, and is there one that is more personal to you than the other?

Nicolas DeAssis: So for one of them I had a co-writer and his name is Lucas. He came to One-Acts last year, and in that one I wrote a play called "Thankless Dinner," and he was talking about how much he liked it, and he was just talking about how he wanted to try to do plays and stuff, and he gave me this idea. He basically made a joke about the VeggieTales big thing where they’re like, “Some day, humor will be randomly generated,” and then I started thinking about it more and I was like, “This sounds like a fun concept, let me try that.” And so that’s what made me think about doing "RGHS." For "Who Done Did It?" I just really like mystery stories and a lot of these stories have similar trends, so I want to find what those trends are and make a parody of every murder mystery, and that was what caused that one. There’s not really one that was more personal to me, but they are both ones that I love a lot.

DS: How involved are you with the director to make sure that the play was executed how you envisioned it?

ND: So for "Who Done Did It?" I did step back and let the directors do what they wanted to do, and I would come back and see how everything was doing, but I wouldn’t interfere with their process. For "RGHS," the director was Aitana and we both would talk about what the best course of doing it is, because she would ask me questions like, “What’s the best way of doing X or Y?” and I would be like, “Well, I can't tell you what to do, but I would suggest Z or A.”

DS: What would you say was the most rewarding about writing for One-Acts this year?
ND: Seeing your play performed on stage is incredible. It’s great because you hear the audience and how they react to it, and a very interesting way to gauge how good your writing is, is how the audience responds to it. If the audience doesn’t give much of a reaction, you can kind of feel it, but if you do something or something happens on stage that causes the audience to laugh or in some cases gasp, or even the kind of silence that you know that they’re like, “Oh…” It is really rewarding going through that.

DS: What were the biggest challenges you faced while writing?

ND: Honestly "RGHS" came off the cuff, it was really easy to write that one. For "Who Done Did It?" I had one small difficulty, and that was when I was writing it the first time, it ended up coming out like a very by-the-numbers parody, the kind of parody that’s the same jokes everyone else has already made, and I though how would I actually make this different and stand out from any other parody of a murder mystery. I also had to come up with reasons for everyone to maybe be the killer, so that took a little bit of time, but it ended up coming out well.

DS: What advice would you give to anybody who’s interested in writing for One-Acts?

ND: Write! That’s what I did. In sophomore year, I was in theater, and they were doing the District Thespians Festival, and one of the categories was play-writing, and I just thought, “Why not?” So I just tried it and I ended up really enjoying it and now I already have one play ready for next year’s One-Acts and I have a bunch of stuff that are, I guess, locked and loaded that are ready to start writing and such. Honestly for me, if you’re writing something and you have this really great idea, in my case when I start writing something and I really like the idea or I really have a lot to do with it, usually it comes out and finishes itself in like a week or two, because it’s like at that point, I’m not writing it, it’s writing itself. I feel like a lot of people get into the mindset that they have to write something, and I’ve never really subscribed to that mindset because that just produces work that’s not the best it could be. So whenever I write something, if I come up to a point where I don’t know what to say next or what to do next, I take a break for two days, and if I still can’t think of something, I just scrap the idea entirely, because that just seems like a very easy system for me because if I’m just trying to figure out and jamming the puzzle piece in to make it work then it’s just not going to come out good.

DS: What do you think is the most important thing for someone who watched One-Acts to walk away with?
ND: So for my two plays, for "RGHS," honestly I want them to come away feeling fun, I want them to have had fun feeling included in it, because that was what I was thinking when I was writing it: was, “Let’s involve the audience.” I want them to feel like this interesting feeling of, “Wow, the characters are talking to me and not at me.” For "Who Done Did It?" I mean I had this whole thing where like yeah you're having fun, but also at the same time, the ending is supposed to be a commentary on the selfishness of people, and in the play it's very clearly people of the upper class, but it’s in general. Just people that don’t care about others and how that mindset can lead to really bad things happening and that's what kickstarts "Who Done Did It?" With Lord Adams, he’s rude to everyone, and because of that, everyone in his party, including himself, dies. And just for One-Acts in general, honestly, I just want people to leave One-Acts feeling like they can do that, like, “Oh, this person who’s not much older than me or even might be younger than me wrote something or directed something or was in that and it was performed and it was there.” I want people to be like, “Wow, I can do that,” because I want more people to submit and do plays and stuff and keep that tradition going.

Next, I spoke to junior Aitana Caparas, who directed the play "RGHS."

Denise Soriano: When or how did you first become interested in directing?

Aitana Caparas: I became interested in directing last year because I was co-directing with Noah Crook, and I really liked and enjoyed it. It was really fun working with all those people and exploring different types of theater that fit the play the best. Last year, I co-directed "Thankless Dinner." It was written by Nicolas DeAssis and the one I directed this year was also written by him, so it worked out.

DS: What was the most rewarding thing about directing this year?
AC: The most rewarding thing was seeing all the things that they struggle with, it all just came together, especially on Friday and Saturday night, all the issues that they had with their lines, it all disappeared when they got on stage, and it made me so proud of them, even though I’d get annoyed with them.

DS: What do you think was the most challenging part of directing?
AC: Definitely most challenging thing, since I had a cast mainly of all juniors, I would have trouble getting them all in one place at the same time, since a lot of them were all friends with each other, they would go off and talk to other people in other pays and I would be like, “I need you guys here right now,” and it would take me ten minutes to get everyone together. At the same time, I had a lot of the cast multitasking with Multi or clubs or what not, so having them manage their schedule was something really big, and it kinda annoyed me when they didn't.

DS: Were you involved with the casting at all?

AC: So when auditions came, we had “the fight” which is when we decide who gets which part. Yeah, we have the fight, and basically what we do is argue, not really, over people, and I chose people who everyone would have good energy with, because I would have five people on stage at one time, so I wanted the energy on there to express good chemistry with everyone, which is why I chose a mainly junior cast, and that’s also the class I knew the best. A lot of them were friends which made it even better, especially Jack and Sarah, they're friends in real life, and you could tell on stage, the jokes, they had fun with it.

DS: What advice would you give to someone who is interested in directing?

AC: If you’re interested in directing, just go for it. Even if you have no experience, just push yourself and put yourself into that risk of directing. Yes, it may be hard initially because you don’t know what to do, especially if you’re by yourself or if your co- director doesn't help at all, but voicing your opinions and being assertive goes such a long way into making a beautiful play.

DS: What do you want the audience to take away from "RGHS?"

AC: It’s just a silly play. It’s just a silly goofy play where I hope the audience enjoyed having some sort of part in it, because we had two endings for "RGHS," and on Saturday it was the A ending, where everybody said we can hear you, I really hope that they enjoyed taking a part in a play, because I know most plays you just watch. Having the audience actively participate in a play I feel like engages them even more. If nobody said anything there would be a cricket noise,  and they'd be like, “Oh my gosh, why aren't you helping us?” Friday was ending B, and Saturday was ending A, because we knew everyone would come on Saturday.

Looking into the minds of three Stanton creatives who were heavily involved in the creation of One-Acts offered a deeper insight into the process of bringing the production to life. Elias-Sowers, DeAssis, and Caparas’ contributions to the fine arts in our community is invaluable, along with every actor and technical crew member involved. The Annual Night of One-Act Plays is crucial for keeping the Stanton theater traditions alive.

photos by Denise Soriano