Caroline Cioffi, Reporter
@cciofficourant
The NCHS Theatre Department is known throughout New Canaan as well as the greater theatre community for its award-winning plays and musicals. Five times a year, students collaborate under the guidance of directors like Deidra “Dee” Alexander to put on productions that showcase singing, dancing, acting, and other aspects of theatrical production. Once a year, however, Drama Fest gives theatre students the opportunity to take the lead and direct their own one-act shows.
This year, Drama Fest featured 8 performances written, casted, staged, and directed entirely by students. The productions were centered around students’ own interpretations of the theme: ‘Heaven Knows’. Submission were due in early March and, once the acts were submitted, Dee organized the shows into the Drama Fest program, which awarded first, second, and third place prizes.
Junior Wyatt Lysenko’s Heaven Knows How To Party was awarded the first place prize. When planning his act, Wyatt knew that he wanted it to be both unpredictable and exciting. “The theme ‘Heaven Knows’ has implications of an unknown situation,” Wyatt said. “So I went with something wild and weird that I knew I’d have a lot of fun writing”.
In Heaven Knows How To Party, Wyatt wrote about a nontraditional view of heaven. “The show was about two new arrivals to heaven,” Wyatt said. “They want to get to know their neighbors so they decide to throw a house party, but the people who they invite weren’t who they expected them to be.”
Though he participated in Drama Fest last year, Wyatt had never directed his own show. “Directing my own show definitely gives me more respect for our own director,” Wyatt reflected. “I learned how to work with people individually and make it into a group effort.” Wyatt hopes to continue doing theatre both in college and as a potential career. “Theatre is my passion,” Wyatt said, “and I hope to pursue it with my whole heart.”
Though Sophomore Fiona Stevens has had experience directing various independent student films, Drama Fest gave her the opportunity to take on a new perspective through her show, Waiting Room. “Waiting Room follows the stories of four different people you might find in a hospital waiting room,” Fiona said. “The stories are told from the perspectives of their own guardian angels and, as the show progresses, the audience can see an angelic perspective of their own daily lives.”
Having spent time in hospital waiting rooms herself, Fiona’s act encompassed both her own emotions and those of others she knows to have had similar experiences. “It was definitely a journey deciding what stories I wanted to tell and projecting my own experiences in waiting rooms in hospitals,” Fiona said. “Some of the characters onstage represent people that I’ve known or even myself.”
Fiona’s Waiting Room was awarded the second place prize. Not only was Fiona’s play honored, but she also learned a lot from her experience. “Monologue writing was definitely an interesting surprise in my process,” Fiona said. “An even bigger surprise was how quickly the actors adapted.” When asked if she hoped to pursue directing after high school, Fiona responded “Definitely!”.
