One act Beauty and the Beast demands roaring applause

 

As the story unfolds, Belle transforms in this modern day Beauty and the Beast put on by 20 SAHS students in the one act play competition held by Minnesota High School League. One acts are shorter plays that lack multiple acts. 

Theatre students took part in one act plays that began on Jan. 28 for preliminary finals at SAHS. They continued Feb. 4 for finals at SAHS and ended on Feb. 12 for the state competition at The O’Shaughnessy, St. Catherine University in St. Paul.

Although the plays are shorter they still require a lot of time and effort put into them for the show to run smoothly.  Rehearsals began right before winter break. They made a lot of changes and procrastinated a little bit, but the end result was still good.

“One act plays are a lot of work, but they are very fun. I enjoyed everything about them,”  junior Nikki Mills said.

This year’s one act plays competition started with 12 schools . The preliminary portion was held at two different schools, six groups competed at each. The top three groups from each then participated at finals. From there the top group moved to state.

“We did not win, but we got second which was pretty great. We worked really hard, we would have liked to have gone to state but second is good too,” Mills said.

With this competition there are strict requirements that come into play. Everything has to be run by students the director may stand by to supervise, but that is the only participation he or she may have. The group number can not exceed 20 students. The group participating has ten minutes to set up their set and the whole set cannot exceed ten by ten. The whole show itself can not exceed 35 minutes.

“Since we were not allowed to switch our set up, I played the castle spirit that moved stuff around between scenes to get ready for the upcoming scene,” senior Ben Olsen said.

This enchanting yet dark tale is much different than the Disney version. This version follows Belle more closely and watches her transformation rather than how the beast transforms. The tale takes a twisted turn and Beast ends up dying in the end.

“I really enjoyed Disney’s  Beauty and the Beast so playing the role of beast was pretty great, it’s been my favorite role to play and it’s brought a great new experience for acting during these one act play’s,” senior Noah Campbell said.

One act plays not only can help with budding actors but they help with students who still have yet to find their love for acting or even students who just want to make some new friends. Many students did not even expect to be apart of the show, but ended up loving every moment of the process.

“I was originally not apart of the show, two of my friends had asked me to join but I had told them no because it just was not my thing, a week or so passed and I saw and heard how much fun they were having and decided to give it a try. It ended up being a lot of fun and I met several new people along the way,” Olsen said.