Wonderful Weekend of One Acts

Three students have taken on the role as directors and will be making their directorial debuts this Thursday through Saturday with three one acts along with a one act musical.

Ally Anson, Ash Tointon, and Henry Vote (all 12th) chose to apply to be student directors for this year’s One Act Festival. This has been a relatively new realm for the three directors who have little to no experience with directing. This is Tointon’s and Anson’s first time directing, but they have both been involved in many other aspects of theatre. The two wanted to expand their knowledge and experience by dipping a toe in the pool of directing. Earlier this year, Vote co-directed a musical with two of his friends but this has been his first solo directing project. While these shows are going on, there will also be a one-act musical with a cast of a whopping four characters and a few featured here and there. The one act features Sophie Anderson (10th), Joey Westerdale (11th), Gabriela Miranda (12th), and Henry Vote (12th).

Each night of the One Act Festival shows three different one acts. The first of each night is the musical “Ordinary Days” which follows four characters in New York City as they discover how their ordinary lives connect to one another in many amazing ways.

This opening act is directed by Ms. Mary Dickson, head of the drama department, and is followed by two student-directed performances. In no particular order, these one acts consist of “That’s Not How I Remember it,” “The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon,” and “A Bright, Clear Sky.” 

“That’s Not How I Remember It” is directed by Vote. Vote gave a brief description of the play: “It’s about a mom and a dad telling their son about how they met, but their stories are wildly different. The dad’s story is like an ‘80s action movie inspired by ‘Karate Kid.’ Mom’s is more of an ‘80s rom com inspired by ‘Sixteen Candles.’ It’s zany, crazy, with some wacky characters.” Vote explained the process as being a nice refresher from always being the actor to directing a play of his own. “ I really enjoy being in charge of a show and having a say in everything, and having it be my vision coming to life,” Vote said.

Designing lighting, a set, casting, and blocking have all been challenges the directors ran into but they can all agree that the limited time they had was the largest.

“We’re not given a lot of time and we need to share the time and the space with three other one acts, so it’s just like, well I mean everything’s getting done, it’s just that the speed is a little bit slow,” Anson said. Anson is directing “The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon.” The play is led by two narrators who take the audience through a series of fairy tales that all connect as one large story.

Vote shared his opinion saying, “Ally’s is hilarious. It’s literally all the Brothers Grimm fairy tales thrown together into a 50-minute show.”

Anson’s motivation for directing was learning and experience. She has spent plenty of time on and off the stage of various productions. “I’ve wanted to get the experience so that I could know everything that I can about theatre,” Anson explained.

While there are many things that go into directing, she says her favorite part is bringing her visions and ideas to life. “Reading the script and making it what I want it to be and having it on the stage for other people to see, that’s going to be really cool.”

Tointon’s thoughts were similar. They expressed their love for having an idea and making it reality. The play that they’re directing is “A Bright, Clear Sky.” The play is about 10 Norwegian immigrants in the winter of 1880 and they’re running low on supplies. This is also their first directing project and they explained the initial challenges were about decisionmaking. Having no experience directing a show, making creative choices and coming up with decisions was a jarring experience.

“Sometimes you just have to make a decision that doesn’t have any grounds and just roll with it. Designing the set, the script wasn’t too specific so I had to make sure everything worked with anything else.” Tointons show is performing on Thursday the 23rd and Friday the 24th.

To watch these one acts and support the student directors and actors, stop by the Titan Theater this Thursday-Saturday! The schedule is as follows: