One Acts: Middle School Play

Middle School Spring Play February 22, 2020

Our Middle School winter play this year was a collection of short one-act plays by various playwrights. Each play had a very small cast (most just two or three actors) and minimal set and costume design requirements, so the focus was really on the wordplay and story delivery within each scene.

Three of our pieces; The Philadelphia, Words, Words, Words, and Sure Thing are from the David Ives collection of short plays called All in the Timing, but that title could apply to all the scenes we chose. These were comedic stories in which timing and subtlety were so important, and our small cast size gave us the chance to explore those skills in depth.

Sprinkled among our published One Acts were three short plays written by our AP French students at the High School. Dr. Teresa Todd challenged her students to write plays (in French!) for us to perform. Our middle schoolers had so much fun experimenting with how to tell a story when neither we nor our audience understand the language! These short (less than three minute) scenes quickly became everyone’s favorite moments of our show. Dr. Todd came to several rehearsals to help us with our French pronunciation, and we were all delighted to see the AP French students in our audience for our performance.

While I had a chance to work closely with the cast of each of these scenes each week, the students were highly motivated and came up with most of their best moments on their own. Their delivery was funny, perceptive, and intelligent, and each student had plenty of time on stage to develop his/ her character – so we had a lively time together.

The French plays made us aware of how much we can communicate nonverbally. David Ives’ plays made us think about words and rhythm and what we can do with them. Sharon Creech and Mary Louise Wilson’s plays allowed us to focus on relationships and how we change ourselves for each other. All of our plays made us laugh together every day.

The Philadelphia by David Ives introduces a man who realizes, with the help of a friend and a waitress that he has awoken in ‘a Philadelphia’ and will not be able to get anything he asks for as long as he remains in it.

Lost by Mary Louis Wilson Two women of a certain age prepare for a night out at the theater but only when the women are up-side-down can they remember anything – from where they are going, to where their purses are.

Le Manchot Et Le Petrel by Caroline Humphrey, Claire Humphrey in which a small penguin asks her mother why she cannot fly and her mother takes her ‘flying’ with the fish in the sea.

Words, Words, Words by David Ives imagines the conversations between three monkeys typing to infinity to sooner or later produce Hamlet.

Le Chameau et le Ver by Gigi Elliott, Shealy Mischiniski, and Elizabeth Rowland in which a worm chastises a camel for his rudeness and reminds him to be kind to the high and the lowly.

The Raven by Sharon Creech spoofs the publishing office of the famous poem The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe and how such a poem might be received by an editor today.

Petite Nicolas by Gigi Elliott, Caroline Humphrey, Claire Humphrey, Ian Jaffe, Shealy Mischiniski, Elizabeth Rowland, and Lillie Waddell in which the fate of a teacher’s reputation with her supervisor relies on the least engaged member of her class answering one question correctly – and the antics of the class to help her answer successfully.

Laughs by Mary Louis Wilson details the challenges of a stage manager of a summer stock theater as he navigates the complicated relationship between two of his actors with competing egos.

Sure Thing by David Ives in which two strangers meet in a restaurant and are interrupted by a bell each time one of them says the wrong thing until they find themselves through to falling for each other in a Groundhog Day kind of a way.