Acting Teacher Julie Parrish recently conducted her first-ever “normal” performance with JC’s Acting II class, and it was a hit.

Toward the end of April, JC’s acting class performed 13 Ways to Screw Up Your College Interview. The performances occurred during two different mods.
The performances both had large turnouts, and multiple teachers such as Spanish Teacher Cathy Edge brought students to the auditorium to view the show.
One student from Ms. Edge’s class, Junior Ava Freeland, shared that the performance “was really entertaining, and it was fun to watch the people I know perform.”
Mrs. Parrish revealed that she and the acting class came to the conclusion that they wanted to perform 13 Ways to Screw Up Your College Interview after “perusing scripts toward the end of January.” She also revealed that only a month later in February the acting class started rehearsals.
In order to find possible scripts, Mrs. Parrish shared that she used “different playwright companies that allow you to do filtered searches based on the size/gender of your cast.”
Many steps went into the physical preparation of the performance following the selection of the play.
Mrs. Parrish said that following the selection of the play, she “held auditions for the various parts and cast the show.” Then, after students were selected for certain parts the class “would spend class time blocking and then rehearsing the show.” Some rehearsals included props/costumes and being “off-book” for the actors to memorize their lines.
Other than working with the students, Mrs. Parrish also shared that she “worked behind-the-scenes finding appropriate sound cues, working with our Technical Director, Mr. Ed Lake, to make sure we could have the set and tech elements of the show in place, and finding assistance to run the tech elements in the booth for the performance.”
One actor, Junior Lane Miller, shared that he and the acting class were “given about two months to prepare for the play.”  About the preparation, he also revealed that he had to “memorize around 50 lines,” and the preparation was “pretty stressful on top of my other commitments.”
However, even with plenty of preparation, some struggles still arose when creating the performance.
In fact, on the day of the performance, Mrs. Parrish revealed that “three out of the 16 students in the class [were] out sick.”
However, to combat this issue, Mrs. Parrish was able to “enlist the help of former acting class students to fill in for the roles of these students at the very last minute.”
Individual setbacks faced by some of the performers, such as Lane, had to deal with anxiety and stress. He said, “My least favorite part of the play was definitely line memorization; also being a little anxious on stage.” However, he revealed that he plans to do more plays in the future.
Even with some struggles during the play, overall the show was a success. The crowd was enthusiastic, laughing hysterically at multiple parts of the performance. Students in off-mods came in to view the show as well.
Next year, Mrs. Parrish plans to plan and put on another acting performance with her students.