Sure to offer something for every taste, Centreville High will present its one-act play festival of student-written-and-directed work, this Saturday, March 29, at 7 p.m. in the school auditorium. Tickets are $3 at the door.
Four plays, about 25 minutes each, will be presented — plus "Showtoons," four funny skits that will entertain the audience in between the other plays. The students started rehearsing in December, and festival stage manager Rick Mathews says the whole evening should be lots of fun.
"The festival highlights the students' work and is their senior finale," he said. "It's good to see so many who have taken the initiative to write plays. They've put a lot of work and effort into them."
"Showtoons," written by Andrea Palombella, offers "weird snippets of life," said Mathews, each three to five minutes long.
* In "Who's Carmen Miranda, Anyways?" a guy wants to be a Carmen Miranda lookalike, and he comes on stage and dances in fruit-adorned hats.
* "Customer Service" is about a man who receives a $250 cable-TV bill and tries to get it straightened out. But he's frustrated as he gets passed from person to person on the phone.
* "Children's Game" follows two children playing Candyland, but they're cheating and then calling their mom to tell on each other.
* In "Bravo Boy," a boy and girl have been dating awhile and are on a couch. But when the boy gets up and goes into the kitchen, the girl finds another girl's lingerie underneath the couch.
As for the actual plays, the one drama is "My Life to Live," written and directed by Theo Thompson. It's about a son whose father has died, and he begins drinking and takes out his grief on his family — especially his mother and sister.
"Shakespeare's Legacy," a comedy by Chris Nolan, is about actors who want to perform a Shakespeare's play, but can't decide which one. So they argue about it, playing roles from plays such as "Hamlet" and "MacBeth" while quarreling. Said Mathews: "It has a modern twist, plus lots of jokes about high school and current events."
"Play it Wright" was written by Ben Meyers and is directed by Derek Reynolds. It, too, features an acting troupe. "Their theater's downtrodden and everyone's disgruntled," said Mathews. "But there's lots of comedy. For example, a crow lives in the theater — high up in the roof — and it's part of their contract that they can't kick him out. But he squawks loudly at inopportune moments during their performances."
"The Trysting Place," a comedic drama, is directed by Michelle Boucher. It's set in the 1920s and is about a bunch of wacky hotel guests and their hilarious love affairs.