Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 22, 1993 TAG: 9309220049
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
Once again, the Pulaski County High School Players are taking a unique approach.
"Midway," their fall main-stage production, takes its title from a circus midway.
It will feature various scenes that try to define an adolescent: "You know - what are these creatures that live at Pulaski County High School?" explained Rhonda Welsh, the drama program director.
"The theme of our fall show is `circus,' " she said. The students even visited a circus at the New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg Thursday for background.
"It's perfect. The circus has three rings, and we're adapting from three scripts," Welsh said. She's had that idea in mind for a play for some time.
"You have a concept, and you find a show you can plug in. Not the way you're supposed to do a show, really," she said.
But the PCHS Players never have been tradition-bound, which may help explain some of the regional and state drama awards they've brought home in recent years.
The group has done some ambitious plays, and had planned another for fall before "Midway" was scheduled: Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." But the drama program has undergone some changes since that schedule of three studio and two main-stage productions was planned.
"Two main-stages were killing me and the students. I've had a lot of student burnout," Welsh said. "So we're going to do one main-stage a year."
The advanced theater class went from 21 students last year to nine this year. "Seven of these are seniors," she said. "Next year, I'll be rebuilding."
The winter studio production will be "Metamorphosis," based on Franz Kafka's 1916 story about a man who turns into a cockroach. The lead role will offer a challenge to the student who gets it. The Players already are researching postures and positions of the era, and the affect of clothing styles on how people moved.
The spring production still will be C.S. Lewis' classic fantasy, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."
Despite the success of the school's theater-arts program in recent years, there have been other reasons students had to leave it. Some had after-school jobs. Others opted for sports. In some cases, parents felt more time needed to be devoted to homework.
"A lot of kids can't stay after school," Welsh said. But the new 90-minute periods this year provide an opportunity for more studio-production rehearsal in class instead of after school.
"The only concern I have is that we're on the school calendar for `Romeo and Juliet,' " she said. The calendar was completed before the schedule was revised.
"But it opens up all kinds of possibilities, like the spring studio productions are going to be student-written. . . . I just have a lot more options this way."
A group seeking respite care for teens wants the Players to work on some scenes on homeless adolescents. "We get a chance to do community service. It goes right along with these for our fall show," Welsh said.
She is hoping the audiences who enjoyed previous main-stage plays will check out the studio productions. Those would be enough to support the theater program, she said, "if we can get the community to respond to that, knowing that there's going to be a big-name show, knowing that there's going to be an occasional musical."
And students may be attracted to the program "if they know there's another way to do theater" besides putting in after-school hours, she said. "And if they do well . . . there'll be other students out there saying, `Hey, this is something I want to do.' "
by CNB