School Play Is Back with Student-Written Sci-Fi Thriller
After weeks of editing by senior Joshua Alejandro, the Drama Club’s play is now ready for viewing. Photos courtesy of the Drama Club.
By ANI KUKE and CHERY ABDELMASSIH
Places everyone! Lights, camera, and...action -- this year’s school play is now rolling! After last year’s stage lights were dimmed by Covid-19 restrictions, Midwood’s Drama Club made an impressive comeback with a student-written production this July called The Final Countdown.
At the start of the 2020-2021 school year, the Drama Club was inactive, but senior Tiffany Ordoñez, the current Club President, was determined to change that, alongside Ms. Elizabeth Bommarito, the club’s advisor.
“I wasn’t quite sure how [a play] would work, but solely since Tiffany asked and showed interest, there is a Drama Club this year,” said Ms. Bommarito. “She ran the whole thing. She was the one who recruited and sent out information.”
By late October, the club had been revived, growing to 19 students. Nine of them wrote a 45 minute, three-act play together, with four scenes in each act. After nine months of extensive planning, filming, and editing, the play was uploaded in July.
The Final Countdown is set in 2080 on a distant spaceship. Eight years prior, Earth had experienced a lethal radioactive spill, mutating animals and making the planet uninhabitable. Although survivors have long adjusted to life on the spaceship, tensions arise when Lorenzo, played by junior Bryson Davis, is caught stealing supplies. As punishment, he is sent down to Earth, where there is a slim chance of survival. In an act of rebellion, a group of five teens works together to rescue Lorenzo and make it out of Earth alive.
The cast took inspiration from the underlying science fiction themes and abstract sceneries on The 100, a show on Netflix. They added their own twist, mixing genres from dystopian life to fantasy, with overarching themes of friendship and abandonment.
However, beyond the apparent science fiction elements of this play, there lies the hidden link between the make-believe world of horrifying monsters and the real world of life-threatening diseases.
“Covid is embodied by the monsters in the play because it’s taking everything away from people and destroying their lives,” said Zebiniso Jalolova ‘21. “We worked together to destroy the monsters the same way doctors and scientists are working right now to fight this virus.”
To develop their ideas, the cast connected over Zoom on Thursdays to brainstorm plot ideas. At first, they felt trapped by limitations they imposed on themselves, making the process more challenging.
“While we think we are limited because we are on Zoom, it’s actually the opposite of that,” said Ms. Bommarito. “We have been freed by the boundaries of ‘What can we put on a stage?’ On a screen, you can do anything. The possibilities are limitless. When I said to them, ‘You can do whatever you like because you can draw it, you can film it and put separate things together,’ it opened up the gates and a flood came through. The kids took a spark and ran with it.”
The team began by proposing many different ideas that were once deemed impossible, leaving it up to Ordoñez to find a fair middle ground. “The most challenging thing as director was finding a compromise,” she said. “Everyone wanted different things, so I had to be accommodative to make sure everyone’s input was heard.”
Once the script was sorted out, Ordoñez assigned roles based on individual preferences.
“I think it was awesome that we chose the characters we wanted to play because it made our performances much better and less overwhelming,” said Davis. “We got to play somebody who we could see ourselves through.”
The actors went over the dialogue two to four times before recording during their scheduled meetings. If there were any minor mistakes in the practiced scenes, their peers were there to catch them.
The cast connected over Zoom on Thursdays to brainstorm ideas, and recorded all their scenes digitally. Photo courtesy of the Drama Club.
Outside of their weekly Zoom calls, the cast put in additional efforts to improve on scenes that needed more work.
“We went over our lines religiously,” said Davis. “We took time out of our days to work with the characters by meeting over FaceTime or Google Meet. It was important for us to give each other feedback and to just keep going.”
The backgrounds also went through a polishing process. The art team designed virtual backgrounds to give the illusion that the actors were together in the moment.
One of the artists, freshman Hillary Hernandez, struggled to balance the time-consuming set-making with her daily work.
“I had to do the set pieces fairly quickly because I only had a month,” said Hernandez. “I’m used to procrastinating with my work, so it was hard to manage my time properly, but I was able to work it out by planning out my days for two weeks. One day I did a digital sketch, and the next day I took a break. Then, I continued to work the day after.”
Combining the efforts of the actors and artists, senior Joshua Alejandro, the club’s editor, took on the responsibility of finalizing the play through iMovie, while also incorporating his own musical tastes.
“I was editing the beginning, and I decided to add a mix of music,” said Alejandro. “It was something I made and a part of what [the cast] had come up with as well. I remember Ms. Bommarito really liked it, so I included it.”
As expected, there were some virtual difficulties.
“I had issues with my background because it wasn’t coming up on my phone,” said Jalolova. “So I had to switch to my computer multiple times, but it didn’t work well. It was stressful and nerve-racking because I didn’t want to keep everyone waiting, but [the cast members] helped by directing me step-by-step on how to get it up on my phone.”
Still, the team’s perseverance contributed to a more rewarding overall experience.
“We were told we couldn’t do a school play this year, but guess what? We now have a school play,” said Ms. Bommarito. “Just because we are not in the auditorium and not in the building does not mean that a school play can not be done. There is no way to stop art if you truly want to make it.”