By Samantha Gaynor a senior at Coral Glades High School. Photos by Samantha and Cheri Tishman
Performed in an almost theater, Coral Glades High School’s production of Almost, Maine took the audience by (snow) storm for three nights in October. The production was directed by new drama teacher Ms. Sarah Amengual.
“[Almost, Maine] is especially appropriate for young, burgeoning actors,” Amengual said. “The content is sweet and filled with the innocence of new love without ever touching saccharinity. So often, in high school, the temptation is to go for the ‘bold,’ the ‘daring,’ the ‘cutting edge,’ but this play reminds us that we do not need to rely on shock factor.”
The show is arranged into a series of nine vignettes set in a winter wonderland town called Almost, Maine—named so because the residents never got around to organizing themselves into a geographical location. Almost, Maine was written in the style of magical realism, meaning that all of the figurative references in the show are taken literally. For example, Glory (junior Cassidy Zafonte) carries around broken pieces of her heart in a bag and repairman East (junior Noland Creary) “fixes” it for her when they fall in love.
In The Story of Hope, Haley Amann plays an ambitious and quirky girl named Hope who goes off to college without giving her boyfriend an answer to his marriage proposal the night before. “Since my name is Hope, [the scene] is talking about losing ‘hope’ and how that person lost me had lost hope,” Amann said. “The concept of magical realism is when they say something you think that can’t really happen, but it’s a metaphor.”
The versatile play made the audience laugh, jump and also cry. Amann’s scene filled the more sentimental category while junior Elijah Miller and senior Katie Soldano’s story rounded off the show with comedic moments. Soldano said, “People were crying from the previous scene [The Story of Hope] and mine made them laugh a lot more. My character has no idea that Elijah likes her and she’s oblivious to the fact of love. He blatantly says he likes me and she’s like, ‘we’re just friends.’ In the end we strip and everybody gets a good chuckle.”
Theatre-less Coral Glades High School must get creative when it comes to constructing a performance space. The original plan was to set up the stage in the school’s courtyard but due to bad weather, it had to be relocated inside to the cafeteria. Stage manager senior Kristen West said.,“I’m kind of disappointed that we didn’t get to do it outside at least once because it would have looked really cool, but I think overall doing it inside was easier.”
With opening and closing nights completely sold out, Coral Glades High School’s performance of Almost, Maine drew in a large crowd to see a multifaceted story of almost love. Their next production is the musical Smile to be performed at JP Taravella High School March 4-6, 2016.to get fit and run together!
