English Drama Club

Written by Brittany

I cannot believe it has already been a full month since our drama club performances! This spring is going so quickly.

It’s really difficult to put into words just how amazing being part of the English Drama Club was for us this year.

In high school, Jadon and I were both involved in drama at school, and last year I was given the opportunity to help Mrs. Eileen Kregor with the spring play at Herscher High School. So we didn’t go into this as total novices, but we also did not have very much experience as directors either.

Last June we were able to sit down with Laura Reynolds who had been a conversational English teacher at our school in Prauge 5 years ago. While she was here, Laura started the English Drama Club. As she told us about the opportunity we would have, we were really excited! We enjoy drama and knew it would be a great way to get to know some students on a more personal level. We had a lot of questions and some nerves, but overall we were excited. And that was the right emotion to have.

We had 18 students as part of EDC this year. What’s very interesting about this group is that some of them are our current students at Arabska and others are past graduates. So some of them have moved on to university but were members of EDC when they were in high school, and they come back to participate in it again. This was great because we had some students in their first year with EDC and others in their fifth!

EDC Members at the Christmas Party

We began meeting with the students in early October just playing improv and drama games. In January we had auditions for our play: The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon! Essentially it was a large mash-up featuring characters from many of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. So characters like Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, etc. were all there.

One of our posters, made by Jadon!

We worked on the play from the middle of January until mid-April when we had our performances. The rehearsals were a great experience, and we were weekly impressed with the students’ dedication and abilities. The play was a comedy, and we had students with fantastic comedic timing and a strong desire to make the audience laugh, which they certainly did!

The Enchantress & the Prince in Rapunzel's Tower

Our first performance was April 15, a Wednesday. We were worried that not many audience members would attend on a Wednesday evening, but as I sold tickets, I was amazed that we had 50 people in the audience! Thursday night there were 63 people, and then Friday night we had a full house with 131 people!

The students did a great job, and each night the audience seemed to really enjoy themselves. The play was a full 2 hours, which our students handled so well! They were able to keep the audience engaged and keep up their energy, while performing in English. As Jadon & I walked home each night, we could not stop talking about how proud & impressed we were.

The Princess (from the princess & the frog prince) with her father, the King

So while there were definitely overwhelmed and stressed moments as we tried to think through blocking, costumes, props, sets, programs, posters, tickets, concessions, etc., overall we absolutely loved the experience and cannot wait until we get to do it again next year!

And we must add: we could not have done this without the help of our EDC students. The students we had this year were fantastic. They worked so well together, and constantly were there to answer our questions and help us out. We were certainly blessed by this group!

The cast of The Brothers Grimm Spectaculathon! (plus 2 directors)