With one play down and two to go, the Marcos de Niza High School drama department can briefly breathe a sigh of relief before gearing up for another round of performances. This fall, the department is staging three dramatic pieces, including The Glass Menagerie, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and All In The Timing.
Last weekend, the cast of The Glass Menagerie staged four full-length performances and a few short preview. The avant-garde set and multimedia effects gave the Tennessee Williams classic an updated, modern feel.
Next week, the department will stage You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, a musical featuring the Peanuts characters. The cast of six features freshman Austin Martin as Charlie Brown, freshman Luke Powell as Linus, and sophomore Alexis Jones as Snoopy, senior Sierra Palmer as Sally, senior Collin Mulligan as Schroeder and senior Nicole Petteruti as Lucy. Performances will take place at 7 p.m. on Nov. 18, 19, 20 and 21 in the drama room, room 222. All tickets are $10, and profits will go to the choir and drama funds for their Carnegie Hall trip in the spring.
All In the Timing, three short plays taken from a book of the same name, is still in rehearsals, and will be performed in December. Zosia Cassie, an intern from ASU, works with Drama teacher Patrick McChesney’s classes and is directing the play. She ran a different kind of auditions, focusing primarily on games and improv, and then finally reading sides from “Variations on the Death of Trotsky,” one of the scenes from All In The Timing.
“These are not normal plays,” said junior Chris Medrano, who was cast in All In The Timing as Kafka in “Words, Words Words” and Trotsky’s killer in “Variations on the Death of Trotsky.”
“You have three talking monkeys trying to write Hamlet, a Russian Communist with an axe in his head dying eight different ways, and a man who speaks a nonsense language that you might begin to understand,” he said. “This show is simply outrageous.”
All In The Timing is currently scheduled for 7 p.m. on Dec. 5, and Cassie is currently trying to obtain a matinee performance for the same day. All tickets are $5.