Leon Tolchinsky landed a teaching job in a new town. When he gets there, he learns the town is cursed with chronic stupidity and has been for 200 years. His new job? To break the curse.
Replacing the previous tradition of One Person Shows, the spring play “Fools!” starred Adriano Bracamontes as Tolchibsky and is set in the fictional town of Kulyenchikov. Ava Brown and Alex Glasgow assisted Mr. Joshua Ansley in directing the show.
“I think it was over winter break we ended up reading [the three options] and me and Alex were both like, ‘Fools!’ is so funny and so we decided to do it,” Brown said. “Ansley also really likes Neil Simon, so that is what persuaded him to pick it as well.”
Ansley met with the theatre director at Rocklin, Ms. Emily Masnica, and discussed the issues they had been experiencing with the Senior OPS (One Person Show) performances. There were some students who worked hard to write theirs, while some used Chat GPT or simply didn’t write one at all. Because of the wide range of writing abilities in the top level of his program, he implemented the spring play.
“It kinda stung a little bit,” Glasgow said. “I envisioned it as the whole senior package in theatre, and I had honestly been sitting on an OPS since sophomore year. I do understand why he did it, though.”
Glasgow did get to leave his mark, though, and worked hand in hand with Ansley and Brown to direct the play. Originally, they were meant to co-student direct a Theatre II/III show, but it fell through because of scheduling. The two student directors have gone through the program together, gaining a level of closeness, so Glasgow described “Fools!” as a full circle experience.
“My favorite part of directing had to be collaborating with Ansley on a level I hadn’t before,” Glasgow said. “I’ve been super inspired by what Ansley does.”
Because the show was originally unplanned, there wasn’t much of a budget. Ansley handled the set, while Glasgow dealt with props and Brown did all of the costuming. The show consisted of two sets: one depicted a village with a water well in the center while the other portrayed Doctor Zubritsky’s office. Most props and costumes were reused from previous shows. Glasgow said the show is grounded and isn’t meant to be extravagant, so the directors tried to reflect that energy in the display side of the production.
“Since I’m in Theater IV, I got to grow with these people because I knew some of them from Theater I, so I already kind of knew where they fell with their weaknesses, but also their very strong attributes and kind of where they fit in line,” Brown said. “I feel like the hardest part was casting because we couldn’t double cast it, and there were so many people who I wanted to see in the same role, but I knew it could only be one of them, even though they all had amazing attributes for that role.”
Taking two months of preparation, the show started with auditioning days, not requiring callbacks with such a small pool of cast members. From there, the cast jumped straight into a cold read, which is when actors in a show read the script for the first time without preparation, usually in a circle of chairs. Then, every Theatre IV class, they work on the script and learn blocking for each scene. Because the cast is all in one class, they didn’t require any rehearsals outside of school, unlike the spring musical, “Mamma Mia!”, which had rehearsals every day after school. Tickets went on sale April 14 with shows April 30 and May 1 at 7 p.m.
“It was sad, it was hard, but I also think it was a lot of fun to finish strong for some people that have put in a lot of time into everything,” Ansley said. “There was a lot of tears shed, and a lot of wonderful things said. It’s good that it’s sad because that means that things went well.”
by SARAH CHOI, LILA COMBS, ROWEN KIBBY & CARSON NICHOLS
