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Photo by Jon Anderson.
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Spain Park High School theater students use a set model to discuss where they will be on stage during performances of the “Peer Gynt” play on Feb. 27-March 1. From left are Samantha McCrary, Sadie Glawson, Shay Haynes, Elena Lynch, Adie Carter and Delsin Johnson-Ortiz.
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Spain Park High School theater shows.
The Spain Park High School the theater department has two big shows planned for the spring semester.
The first is “Peer Gynt,” a play first published in 1867 by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. It’s the story about the life of a person who is trying to find himself and the lessons he learns from the choices he makes, Spain Park theater teacher Dustin Helmer said.
While it’s an old play, “I think it has a lot to say to us, especially to teenage students,” Helmer said. “They are very much in the process of figuring out who they are and what they want to be. It’s about self-discovery and self-actualization. That’s a big issue they all face.”
The play, to be performed in the Spain Park theater Feb. 27-29 and March 1, also has a lot of Norwegian folk stories and mythology and traditional Norwegian dancing and music, Helmer said. It was once turned into an opera, and this version of the play includes some of the music from the opera, he said.
While the original “Peer Gynt” was a five-act play, this one will be performed as a two-act play with about 30 actors, Helmer said.
Then on April 16-19, the Spain Park theater department is partnering with the school’s band, choir and dance departments to produce “The Wizard of Oz” musical. This particular version is more like the book than the movie, but it will have all the same songs as the movie, plus a few extras, Helmer said.
He plans to draft Hoover elementary school children to serve as munchkins in the play.
“I think it’s a show everyone will love,” Helmer said. “It’s a great story about home, about being courageous, about having brains and knowing how to use them and having heart and how to use it — good lessons for life.”
ONE-ACT PLAYS
Spain Park theater students also put on one-act plays during the fall 2019 semester.
They performed a one-act play called “The Nose,” which was an adaptation of a short story by Nikolai Gogol. It is a fantasy piece about an Instagram model who woke up one day to find her nose missing and also to find out that her nose had also become an Instagram model and was now more popular than her.
Spain Park won best set for that show at its district competition and also was invited to perform at the state level. Spain Park students Delsin Johnson-Ortiz, Isa Ellis and Stanton Spencer were named to the state all-star cast.
Helmer said he has applied for Spain Park to perform “The Nose” at the Atlanta Fringe Festival in June and should find out in February if they were accepted.
