From stereotypes to personal accounts of the day the World Trade Center fell Sept. 11, 2001, Warsaw Community High School’s “Evening of One Acts” plays will touch on a variety of themes. The performances start at 7 p.m. Feb. 11 in the WCHS Performing Arts Center auditorium, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. All tickets are $5 at the door. Over 80 students from the high school are involved in the one act plays, and each play is co-directed by two high school students. The evening begins with “110th Street Station,” directed by Lydia DeBoest and Sara Hohman. It is a comedy about “judging a book by its cover.” Throughout this short and fun play, a variety of characters with an array of differences meet in a subway station under the streets of NYC, according to a provided synopsis. Through many unexpected interactions, the characters discover new connections with each other that oddly surprise them and, by the end, realize that first impressions are often far from correct. DeBoest said the play gives the message that first impressions aren’t always correct. Actor Zach Allen said the characters in the play initially hate each other, but by the end they change and are happier. In the one acts last year, Allen said he had two directors who weren’t on the same level. This year, DeBoest and Hohman are both prominent in directing, he said, which made the experience better. “We have a really good cast. It’s a mix of different classes, and I got to learn to work with new people I just met,” DeBoest said. The evening will turn a little more serious for the second one act, “And the Giants Fell.” It tells the personal accounts from a variety of people about the day the World Trade Center fell Sept. 11, 2001. Directed by Bailey Berelsman and Gabi Bradley, the show contains the stories of victims, family members of the fallen, perpetrators and anyone who can remember that fateful day. According to the provided synopsis, “And the Giants Fell” evaluates what can be learned from the events that happened on 9/11, and encourages people to send love and hope out into the world instead of hate. Bradley and Berelsman, both 17, were just toddlers when 9/11 happened, but it’s still fairly recent history for most people. “It’s been difficult because it’s still a touchy subject,” Bradley said, noting that the show brings to the table a different way to see things. Berelsman said he didn’t ask his parents about 9/11 before directing the show, but going through school he’s seen videos and read other people’s accounts of that day. “I just wanted to put feelings other people had and put those in the show,” he said. Bradley said she hopes the audience would be affected by the show, but come out of it with hope and love in their hearts. There are 12 actors in the show playing 23 roles. “This is A Test,” directed by juniors Aaron Wainscott and Katie Yocum, is a one-act play about a student named Alan. He shows up to school completely unprepared for a test that is supposed to decide his entire future. While all of the other students are completely prepared and well studied, Alan is lost and confused. The play takes us through many types of test questions and how Alan chooses to answer them, according to the provided synopsis. Wainscott said at first their cast lacked the “ability to follow direction from people their own age.” But as the work continued, Yocum said that changed and the performers understand the directors are there to give them guidance. “The most fun was getting to know the new people in the cast, the younger people,” Wainscott said. “I like to see them make choices I wouldn’t have thought of,” Yocum said. Directed by Liz Brown and Kendra Housel, “Drama Geeks” examines the different stereotypes one may find in high school theater – the jock who has a passion for dance, the Broadway star wannabe, the flirt who’s only there to meet “chicks,” the awkward kid who nobody talks to and more. They’re all led by “the overly enthusiastic narrator,” the provided synopsis states. The show is reminiscent of “Saturday Night Live” sketches and pokes fun at the low-quality and badly done high school plays. “It was really fun,” Housel said of the directing experience. “This was our second year of directing together.” In choosing a show for “The Evening Of One Acts,” Brown said they wanted to do a completely different type of show than they did last year. They kept everything simple this year and got to dive more into how the actors played the characters. Brown said the challenging aspect was getting good theater students to act bad since “Drama Geeks” is a parody of theater. Written by alumni Jordan Fredericks and directed by Briley Gargis and Abigail Smith, “Rails” opens with a murder that has happened on a train in the 1940s or 1950s and passengers are questioned by an on-board inspector. The two student directors were sick and not at rehearsals Tuesday night to discuss their show. The last show is “I’m A Teenager, Get Me Out Of This Family,” directed by juniors Sam Engle and Brooke Neubaum. It is a humorous story about what happens within an average family when harsh and threatening words are put into actions. Tired of their parents, two kids decide to hold auditions for “new parents,” and out of spite the parents do the exact same, finding themselves on a search for “new kids” in this laugh-out-loud comedy, according to the provided synopsis. “I think our biggest fear was they wouldn’t want to take direction from us, but we’ve become this little family, it’s so adorable,” Engle said about directing for the first time. Neubaum said it was a little intimidating at first, trying to figure out how to direct her classmates but also interact with them as her peers. “We directed them the way we would direct ourselves,” Engle stated.
