SJA Theatre to Perform Winter One-Act Plays
Part of the cast of The Most Massive Woman Wins practiced prior to their first performance this Thursday.
St. Johnsbury Academy Theatre will present four student-directed plays on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, February 15, 16, and 17, in the Stuart Black Box Theater at the Charles Hosmer Morse Center for the Arts. The plays will be performed in two sessions of two plays each. The first session will be on Thursday and Friday, February 15 and 16, will start at 6:00 p.m.; the second session will follow at 8:00 p.m. On Saturday, February 9, the matinee performances will start at 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m.
Senior Lily Sullivan opens the first session, directing the one-act play, The Most Massive Woman Wins, by Madeleine George. Challenging, blunt, and hilarious, four women of various shapes and sizes sitting in the waiting room of a liposuction clinic explore their perceptions of body image. The women reveal their experiences dealing with their weight issues through monologues, short scenes, and even schoolyard rhymes. From painful childhood memories to frustrations with the opposite sex, these experiences both haunt and empower these women as they imagine their way to a new vision of themselves as beautiful and whole. Because of language and subject matter, this play is not suitable for children.
The second play is one of the most popular one-act comedies in America, Check, Please, by Jonathan Rand, and directed by senior Michael Lamontagne. Dating can be hard, especially when your date happens to be a raging kleptomaniac, your grandmother’s bridge partner, or a mime! Check, Please follows a series of blind dinner dates that couldn’t get any worse – until they do.
To start the second session, senior Logan Samuels and junior Elizabeth Gilmartin direct Property Rites, a popular entry into one-act play festivals, written by the Vermont playwright, Alan Haehnel. Kyle Macmanus has invested millions in a high-tech work of art – a collection of human-figure sculptures programmed to perform thousands of movements, monologues, dialogues, and more. But just when Kyle is about to sell the sculptures, they malfunction; the figures are alive. As each one struggles to achieve autonomy, they begin a fatal race against their desperate owner’s destructive plan.
The final play is a comedic adaptation of the most famous Sherlock Holmes mystery, Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes. This fast-paced comedy about everyone’s favorite detective solving his most notorious case involves a small cast playing a variety of roles in a mad-cap and creative telling of the tale. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson must crack the mystery of The Hound of the Baskervilles before a family curse dooms its newest heir.
The director of the tech crew is Jerry Prevost; costumes were prepared by Jane Vinton; props will be arranged by Elizabeth Breen.
All tickets are general admission and will be on sale at the door starting 30 minutes before performance times. The Most Massive Woman Wins, because of strong language and subject matter, should be considered PG-13 and is not suitable for children; the other plays are suitable for all ages.
