By Versailles Dalessio, Online Editor-in-Chief

*Ticket sales will be available at the door on the following days for the following prices:*

• Thursday, March 17 at 7:00 p.m.
• Friday, March 18 at 7:00 p.m.
• Saturday, March 19 at 2:00 p.m.
• $8 for adults 
• $6 for children and senior citizens

Incorporating elements from each William Shakespeare play and performing them all in 90 minutes is not easily doable, especially from a comedic standpoint. However, First Flight’s performing arts students and directors are showcasing their abilities once more with this year’s spring play, “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).”

Students initially suggested ideas like “Romeo and Juliet,” “Macbeth” and “Hamlet” when it came time to choose a play, but there were too few male actors to play these characters. Directors Lauren Deal and Monica Penn decided to roll with all of these performances instead, bringing new challenges forward in a fun and interesting way.

“We are turning a three-person play into a 16-person play, which sounds really hard at first,” junior Skylar Cardwell said. “And although it can be easier than it sounds, it is still pretty difficult, because it is a cast meant for three people and we have to switch places all the time.”

Meanwhile, Deal is confident in the students’ ability to perform and is eager to see what these individuals present to the audience.

“In this show, the three main leads are Adam, Jess and Daniel, but they’re going to go by their real names for the actual show,” Deal said. “We have Loxley Wayland, Skylar Cardwell and Jayden Payne peddling those. All three of them are upperclassmen who have done several shows with us before, and all of them had a really killer audition that made them good choices for those roles.”

Although they had formerly been friends, working together has brought them much closer since the beginning of production. Wayland feels that this experience has not only strengthened their friendship with each other, but with everyone else involved in the theater community.

“Just being in the theater and around everyone is really nice because we’re all a very tight-knit family,” Wayland said. “I love everyone in the cast and they are all really great to work with, which is why I feel that the show is going to be so great and the audience is going to love it.”

Additionally, Penn is looking forward to the thrill of opening night and all the aspects of teamwork that come together to make the show awesome – from the cast working to memorize lines to running crew members handling all the set changes to other behind-the-scenes workers doing hair and makeup and lighting and sound that happen throughout.

“There’s nothing like the feeling of opening night when for the first time you get to perform for a group of people that have never seen it before, and you have all of these thoughts twirling in your head,” Penn said. “ ‘Will they like it?’ ‘Will it be well received?’ ‘Are they in a good seat?’ That first laugh, or that first applause, or that first audience reaction that you hear sets all of that at ease, and you just get to enjoy it and see everybody’s hard work come to fruition.”

Despite Shakespeare’s heavier themes, this production is a comedy that features a lot of shortcuts that make it funny and entertaining. In fact, it’s a very watered-down version of the collection of his historical plays and based on improvised performances. 

“This show is supposed to look really bad. It’s supposed to look rushed – that’s the whole comedy behind it,” Payne said. “It’s not a show that’s supposed to look pretty. It’s supposed to be rough and I think that’s probably why a lot of the jokes are so rough, too.”

With that being said, there is no question that these students have worked substantially to make their last performance one of the most memorable, begging the question: Why should you come to see it?

“It’s supposed to be more immersive for an audience, to interact with the audience,” Payne said. “We are going to pull members from the audience to get them involved in the entire show, and we are going to get the tech in the back to start helping us with various acts. It’s supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to be funny, and it’s a display of all of our skills we have been working on for so long.”

Senior Versailles Dalessio can be reached at [email protected].