The one act plays were performed January 18 & 20, 2018, under the direction of Mr. Mark Roeckers. Three one act plays were performed, one from the junior high, and two by high school students, one non-competitive show and one for competition.

The junior high play titled “Us and Them” by David Campton, was performed by  nine girls. This play  iss about building a wall (“no political message whatsoever,”Mr. Roeckers said.)

The play had a deep message, if you choose to intepret it in a certain way. As they fight with each other and want to separate themselves although they do the same things and have the same ideas.

The girls did a great job, when  not delivering lines they were putting faces on reacting to what their peers where saying and this gave a lot of realism to the play.

The non-competition play was titled “This is a Text” by Stephen Gregg, as  a high school student I could relate all of the characters to my daily life.

The play was about a text that the main character, Sophia, portrayed with energy by Emily Tullis, receives and doesn’t let her focus on a test about Romeo and Juliet.

The whole plot was about her trying to find a way to focus and get a 61 on the test and pass her class. The performances by Hunter Ramsden as “Mr. Greenpeace” and Aidan Carlson as “Germy” were hilarious and the audience just couldn’t stop laughing. Grace Miller was also excellent as the teacher.

The play had a really sharp insight and an exaggerated way of viewing how teenagers see tests and texts. I could relate to some of the thoughts such as when you try to focus but you can’t on a test, that is what made it more interesting for me.

The competition play was titled “Small Actors” also by Stephen Gregg. In this play, Emily, portrayed by Hope Howard, gets the part of servant number two instead of the main role Juliet in a school production of “Romeo and Juliet”.

The plot thickens when she lies to her family telling them that she actually got  the part of Juliet, but the parents go crazy with this news and things get complicated. This play was very  funny, I really liked the transitions between scenes as they looked  cool and they made the story more intricate and engaging.

The competition play was mostly comedy, with daily scenes that some of us could relate to, as when our parents get excited for something because it’s the same thing they did when they were our age, or how parents always forgive their daughters/sons even though they may have done something wrong.

Comedy reigned in the one act plays this year and the plays enjoyed  an enthusiastic response from  both Cotter students and parents.