After putting on an excellent performance of Mary Poppins in the fall, the theater club geared up to compete in the Minnesota One Act Play competition, with their production “A Little Box of Oblivion.” The leading roles in this play went to seniors Quinn Courteau, Maighread Shaughnessy and Grace Jacques, junior Audrey Patterson and sophomore Luke Henson.
“A Little Box of Oblivion” starts off focusing on a ‘normal’ seeming man sitting on a park bench. The man is then approached by a random woman who proceeds to place a box next to him telling him he must look after it, but not ever open the box. The man is joined by three other characters who all take their guesses on what may be in the mysterious box.
After circuming to the anxiety over what could be in the box the man finally opens it, but the woman who delivered it to him returns and gets very mad at him for doing so.
The main characters in this play are Woman, Cool, Neuro, Doom and Sleuth. Woman (who presents the box to Cool) is portrayed as being a good judge of character and being very protective over what’s in her box. Cool is level-headed, and represents what a typical guy would be like. He is eventually told to look into the box against his will.
“Throughout the whole script [Cool] stays level headed until the end where he blows up. He acts as a mediator between all of the crazy ideas that the other characters are coming up with,” freshman Maddie Shafer said.
Neuro is tightly wound and OCD, and believes that the mysterious box holds a bomb inside. Doom is creepy and loves anything evil, he believes that the box holds anthrax. Finally, Sleuth is analytical and thinks everything is a cause for suspicion, she believes there is a severed head inside the box. This wide range of characters provides a great amount of variety in personalities for the audience.
The One Act Play put on by Orono competes with others in Minnesota, any school can apply to be apart of it. The only rules are that the play has to be less than 35 minutes, no food can be used on stage, must be less than 20 members in the cast, and no messes made on stage. Six schools compete in the prelims at sections, Orono went up against New Ulm, Marshall, Delano, Hutchinson and Dassel-Cokato.
“The basic idea of this is similar to a sports tournament. There are various rounds and the shows that score the best move on, while the others do not,” Courteau said.
Each of the three judges gives the play a ranking one-six (one being the best), Orono moved on through this round along with Dassel Cokato and Hutchinson. Orono competed at the section finals with Hutchinson, Dassel-Cokato, New Prague, Chaska, and Minnetonka, but unfortunately they did not make it to state as Minnetonka took the one available spot to move on.
The cast have all been involved in theater throughout their high school careers, and have added to the many successful plays at OHS. The director of the play was Marie Campbell, who has been directing the plays here for the last couple years. The crew is also a very important part of the theatre club and they help to make sure everything runs smoothly throughout the production.
“I am the stage manager which means I help in all aspects of the show, like an assistant director. I am also the person in charge during all performances,” Palmquist said.
This fall the theater club put on an excellent performance of Mary Poppins. The leading roles of Mary and Bert were played by Bloomquist and Henson, who both had outstanding voices in the musical. Auditions are being held this week starting Monday Feb. 13 for the spring play, Harvey. It is a comedy about a man whose best friend is a huge, invisible rabbit. Performances will be April 27, 28 and 29.
“High School theatre is much better when more people do it. We have a largely involved senior class graduating this year and we will need a lot of people to fill that hole,” Henson said.