STAGED
High school play unites community with sword fights, humor
Nicole Tavenner
Maggi Lake, Hallie Moss and Juliette Cheff apply stage makeup before the performance.
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Pre-show huddle
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Nicole Tavenner
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
Witty lines and artistic creativity rang out for two nights in a row at the Ronan Performing Arts Center, where high school students acted out a cult classic book and screenplay, “The Princess Bride.”
Performing Arts Director Jessica Davis said the play was chosen as a way to better engage with the community, as there hadn’t been a huge audience turnout the prior year.
“I wanted to do something fun that the community could get involved with,” Davis said.
The play is a humorous saga of a Renaissance-era romance fit with modern day dialogue and wit.
It drew large crowds both evenings. Davis said the first night she printed off 200 programs and they were all gone by the end of the play.
Because the screenplay was taken from a movie, Davis said that she and the students took creative liberty in adapting it to a theater setting. The actors used the audience area as props for a cliff climbing scene, sword battles, horse rides via horse-on-a-stick, and a fog machine for swamp scenes. The audience seemed quite engaged with swords clanking inches from their heads.
“This performance has been a journey,” Davis said on stage before the final presentation.
Many of the drama students in the play helped with the stage design, costumes, props, lighting and other stage details as a final project that required a lot of research.
The idea to perform “The Princess Bride” sparked from senior Kail Cheff, lead character in the play who became Westley/Man in Black. He said he’d watched the movie since he was a kid.
“I knew most of the lines already,” Cheff said.
“The Princess Bride” will be Cheff’s last acting gig as he heads off to the military.
“All things must come to an end. I really enjoyed working on this one,” Cheff said.
Cheff’s mother Charity said that he became interested in acting when Rita Tingey taught drama, and has been in more than 30 plays. She said that everyone in the play practiced for quite a while.
“They did a lot of work,” Charity said.
Dave Burns, father of Jenaya, who played the malicious and hilarious “revenge seeker” Vizzini, had never seen the movie prior to the play.
“I was told she was going to be killed in Act 1,” Burns said with a smile.
Burns was “poisoned” with a made-up substance put into wine over a battle of wits with Cheff’s character.
Although a high school play, middle-schoolers Maggi Lake, Talon Hawk, and Hallie Moss played the Rodents of Unusual Sizes.
Keeping it in the family, second-grader Luc Cheff was the youngest actor in the play, whose part was the Grandson, to whom the tale was being read.
“Eww. They’re kissing again. Do we have to read the kissing parts?” Luc Cheff’s character said during the “reading” of the adventure.
The success of this year’s play choice could also be seen in the Ronan Bread Basket’s food drive. Instead of asking for payment to enter the theater, viewers were asked to bring canned goods.
Bread Basket volunteers Marilynn Tanner and Nancy Williams said the first night they received 11 boxes and two bags of donations that completely filled the back of a car.
“People have been incredibly generous,” Tanner said.
The two volunteers also helped advertise the play by putting up posters around town.
