UIL One Act competition is approaching, and the MacArthur Theatre Department is gearing up to meet the challenge.
Every year every extracurricular activity gets a chance to prove its worth. The UIL One Act competition, in which a cast of at maximum fifteen people, supported by up to five crew members, put on a play cut down to anywhere in-between 18 to 40 minutes, is drama’s big chance.
The play selected is one familiar to the MacArthur Theatre. Our Lady of 121st Street, the black box play put on this fall, was selected, after much agonizing, over two other plays.
“The script is amazing. It’s only been produced one other time in One Act, […] we felt we had a really solid foundation,” said Mr. Casey O’Bryant, one of the directors of the play.
However, the play does not have the exact same cast as before.
“It has everything to do with making the show new,” said O’Bryant. “I think everybody would agree that trying to do the exact same play, the exact same way, months later, there’d be no energy, no spark, no life.”
The mood of the actors was one of general optimism.
“I’m expecting to go to state,” said junior Tara Franklin, who is acting in her first One Act play this year
Dontalle Sylvester, Senior, who played the part of “Rooftop” in the fall production,had this to say about the feeling of competing in One Act:
“If I had to say one word that sums it all up, it’s excitement, because you don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Mac Drama now has a few weeks to prepare before the first round of One Act, which will decide who competes in district.
