What can be said about this photograph? I wish I could tell you for certain the names of the actors in the picture, but laziness forbids it. Instead, I will tell you a tale of the great and terrible fall trimester of the year 2000.
Back in the early part of this millennium, it was widely known that Mount Vernon High School's drama program was among the finest in the nation. This fact was proven by the many invitations extended to said MVHS d.p. to attend various international festivals of renown, including, but not limited to, the Edinburgh Scotland Festival Fringe, the world's largest theatrical event. Indeed, your beloved narrator did attend this festival, not once, but twice, and the second time brought with him a merry band of students who performed a semi-interesting play there, also consuming some powerful Indian food, climbing very short mountains, meandering the streets of London, and sneaking out to go to foreign nightclubs and make out with foreign boys. Well, your narrator did not partake of that last bit, but he has it on very good authority (i.e. his own eyes) that there were those among his students who did.
But I digress.
After the triumph of this festive performance in the very faraway land of Scotland, your narrator returned home, hoping, nay expecting, to capitalize on the glories of this international recognition and catapult the MVHS drama program to infinity and beyond.
Then they put in the trimester block schedule.
For those too young to remember, this was a schedule whereby students who had previously enjoyed unfettered access to many lovely electives instead found themselves taking nothing but required classes and (inevitably) choir or band. Drama class enrollments crashed and burned, and the remnant of the prior summer's escapade found themselves surrounded not by a whole new crop of excited underclassmen, but by pretty much the sound of crickets chirping. There was no great growth ahead for the MVHS drama program, instead there was a precipitous drop, which reached its nadir when that school year featured only one (1) installment of Friday Free Theatre. Shocking.
HOWEVER! The few hearty souls still hanging around bravely soldiered on, and the show they soldiered into was Christopher Durang's The Marriage of Bette and Boo. It was and is an edgy, nutty, silly, poignant, offensive, heart-warming little play, and your narrator is honored to be once again directing it, ironically enough during a year when enrollment is down and we can barely muster enough people to try out for all the parts.
I can't blame the schedule this time, though. Maybe it's me.
The Marriage of Bette and Boo will be performed on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 PM in the MVHS Auditorium, which is still where it has always been, on the 2nd floor of Old Main. Tickets will cost $7 for Adults and $6 for Students, and they shall be available at the door.
See you there.
