Building their Own Show: Middle School Players Put on Original Play
Rivers Middle School students created a world of their own in the Black Box Theater for this year’s fall play. The latest Middle School production, [Insert Name of Show], was a show fully conceived, scripted, and acted by four Middle School students—Maggie Tompros ’30, Charlotte Hardgrave ’30, Alma Peña ’31, and Bea Ketcham ’30—under the direction of Ellie Strayer. The original show premiered in the Black Box Theater on Friday, November 15, with two additional community performances on Monday and Tuesday.
With a run time of a little over 25 minutes, the show packs a lot of excitement into a short span of time. The narrative follows three game-show contestants, each with a big personality: Jordan Gray (Tompros), an actress passed over for the role of hosting the show; “CC” Liu Liss (Hardgrave), passionate about gum and slow to pick up a joke—and blissfully unaware of the irony of her name; and Adeline Cicely Gwendolyn Blythe, aka Addy (Peña), a spoiled, rich heiress.
Our stars enter a game-show set in front of a “studio” audience, through the ups and downs of live TV. The live audience in the Black Box Theater, full of Grade 7 students at one performance, understood the assignment, laughing and applauding enthusiastically when prompted by the stagehand (played by costume designer Cathy Favreau).
A spin of the wheel lands the contestants in a murder mystery, which turns into an active investigation of a murder on set. In hilarious fashion, a janitor who was once a detective (Ketcham) steps onto the scene (and the live cameras, unbeknownst to the stars of the show) to solve the mystery.
The sets were colorfully constructed, from the podiums the contestants used to the custom spinning wheel. The theme music—“Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen—perhaps alluded to the presence of murder in the show. The premise of the show also allowed the cast to break the fourth wall and be conscious of the audience in front of them.
Strayer not only served as the show’s director, but also mentored the students in the creative process of developing the show. “I made a decision that this process would go deeper into the development and production of theater than fall plays have in the past,” she said. “Because of our small (but mighty) numbers, we were able to dive into the means of theatrical production as a group in a truly unique way. When it comes to [Insert Name of Show], these four students are responsible for imagining the premise, writing the script, painting parts of the set, inspiring designs for their costumes, and building the entire world of the show.”
Additional shout-outs go to math faculty member Emily Samperi starring as “The Host” and Elise Kravitz ’28 on the light board, and to Diane Devore, Juliet Bailey, Julia Auster-Hogan ’06, and members of the Upper School tech crew.
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