Feature Photo By: Roman Edwards – Pictured left to right, sophomore Mercedes Lopez, senior Alana Leon-Velez, and senior Kat Hagen perform one of their shows on stage. The show is being performed this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
Kicking off the second straight show of the year is advanced performing arts’ production of Our Lawyers Made Us Change the Name so We Wouldn’t Get Sued. Straying away from what many consider to be traditional theatre, this is the first time Rangeview has ever attempted to do a show like this.
This idea was first introduced by theater teacher and director Mrs. Anderson and initially garnered a mixture of feelings and emotions. However, with this being Mrs. Anderson’s first advanced performing arts show, many believe that this unique show idea will be a great start for her APA debut.
“We’ve never had this much freedom in a show before and being able to voice our opinion on relevant topics gives us a platform to express ourselves,” says senior Donovan Strouse. “With such a big cast, it can be described as ‘organized chaos’ but nothing like this has been done in Rangeview theater history.”
The premise of the show can be best summarized as a series of original self-written shows spread across three very diverse casts.
This idea was drawn from a theater ensemble based in Chicago called the Neo-Futurists. Their show, titled Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, follows a similar concept: each week the members of the ensemble roll a dice which is then used to determine how many new shows are written. The old shows are then replaced with the new ones and 30 short shows are then performed each week.
The premise of the show can be best summarized as a series of original self-written shows spread across three very diverse casts.
Rangeview’s production follows a similar structure. APA has spent the past few months writing, proposing, and refining their own set of shows. With a nearly 60 member cast, the class was divided into 3 smaller casts. Members of each cast develop and pitch original ideas that revolve around either event on their life or events happening around the world. These pitches are widdled down to 30 short shows per cast which ultimately results in 60 shows per night – with 2 casts performing per night.
Senior Lisitte Mora says, “It has been a challenge adapting people’s real-life stories and situations into a show, especially only being two minutes long. However, we welcome the challenge and I think we pull it off well.”
Upon attending the show, each audience member will be handed a menu – a list of the shows that will be performed for the night. Each show on the menu will have a correlating number and on the stage, a clothesline will be hung with each respective number hung on the line. Audience members will be encouraged to shout out a number and the number picked will the be the
show performed. This goes on until all shows in the rotation are performed. There will also be a timer for one hour per cast and any shows not performed within the one-hour time frame will simply be skipped.
Given that these are all self-written shows by members of the APA cast, the genres of the show range from comedic to dramatic and the structure ranges from the whole cast shows to individual monologues. Given creative freedom, these shows address very relevant and serious issues that many APA cast members address each day.
“I think it’s cool that we’re doing something we’ve never done before,” says senior Jordan Clanton. “I don’t think I would have been able to do something like this outside of Rangeview and I think it’s something unique that is important not only to the actors but hopefully it will also affect the people who see it.”
You can share these stories and experiences alongside casts of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind at 7 pm on November 29th and 30th and December 1st.
- Casts A and B perform on Thursday with cast A performing first.
- Casts B and C perform on Friday with cast B performing first.
- Casts A and C perform on Saturday with cast C performing first.
The first cast performs at 7 followed by a 10-minute intermission and then succeeded by the second cast.
The tickets are $5 from the bookkeeper or at the door for everyone but there is limited capacity. Make sure to pick up your ticket as soon as possible if you wish to see the show.
