Twenty-two members of the school’s thespian troupe 1780 participated in the District 3 Thespian Festival hosted by Lyman High School in Orlando, Florida on November 16 and 17. They had great success.

The one act play, Tigers Be Still, gathered several accolades.

Staged by only four students, it was the third show of the school’s 2012-13 theatre season and the school’s first ever one-act taken to the Thespian festival.

The cast consisted of seniors Katy Sullivan and Austin Sultzbach, and juniors Molly Wuerz and Emma Allende.

Instead of typical after school or lunch rehearsals, the students took Advanced Acting with theatre director and Fine Arts Chair Janine Papin.

At districts, the cast of four earned Superior (the highest possible ranking) in acting and Excellent in tech (the second highest ranking). “Not only were these scores remarkable, but the one-act beat out schools who have been doing them for years – and this was our first time doing one,” said Allende.

Besides performing at districts, the show had four performances on the school’s stage which opened on November 8.

The cast and Papin had to choose a play that would still make sense after cutting it down to 40-minutes (the Thespian time limit). “After being assigned specific roles Mrs. Papin thought would fit us best, we chose Tigers Be Still. We all somehow instantly clicked with the characters we were given and fell in love with the story,” said Allende.

Due to the small cast, Papin decided to switch the gender of one of the characters. “Zoe (Allende), who is written to be Zach, was switched into a girl,” said Papin.

Although the cutting process may have been tedious, it made complete sense. “We read numerous plays that were great, but Tigers Be Still seemed the easiest to work with because we only had four students in the class and so we did the show,” said Sultzbach. “It was really nice having such a small cast because we were all able to work extra hard on our character development and have a lot of quality bonding time.”

After cutting it, the small company came together to create a realistic piece of modern literature with unique and believable characters.

Contemporary playwright Kim Rosenstock’s dramedy

follows Sherry Wickman (Wuerz), a young woman who expects the perfect career and life to fall into place immediately upon earning her Masters degree in art therapy.

When she is hired as a substitute art teacher, things begin to brighten up. Now if only her miserable sister would get off the couch, her first patient would do just one of her take-home assignments, her new boss would leave his gun at home, and someone would catch the tiger that escaped from the local zoo, Sherry’s life would be ideal.

In addition to the one-act, eleven of sixteen individual events entered received Superior ratings. Five individual events received Excellent ratings.

The most prestigious title is Best-in-Show where students must perform their scene in front of everyone in the district.

Freshmen Nicholas Reifler received Best-in-Show for his student-directed scene from The Children’s Hour, starring freshmen Mackenzie Bland and Ailsa McFadyen-Mungall.

Junior Gaby Bloom and sophomore Jack Dwyer received Best-in-Show for Duet Acting with their scene from Rajiv Joseph’s comedy Gruesome Playground Injuries.

  Everyone who participated in the district festival qualified to move on to the state festival in March.

Each school can only send five events to go to the state festival.

Among them will be the large group musical, “Magic to Do” from the school’s recent production of Pippin, which earned straight superior ratings.

Troupe 1780 had a successful run at the district festival and will certainly light up the stage at the state festival.