Almost, Maine
Theater teacher and students reflect over the Spring play
The Theater Department performed their spring play, “Almost, Maine” on May 3 and 4. The play is set in a fictional town in northern Maine, about the different types of love relationships.
“It’s best to describe as a romantic comedy, a rom-com,” theater teacher Aaron Powell said. “It’s 7 different couples stories, and the thing that weaves it all together is the concept of love.”
This production was Powell’s first high school show to direct, and they were a couple of bumps in the road.
“I was really looking for something that we would be able to do very quickly and without being able to use the stage locks being it was being used by dance and band,” Powell said. “We’ve really only had one rehearsal on stage before we ever get to perform in front of an audience.”
With the pressure to complete the setting, Powell had a bit of help from a couple of students to create the snowy Maine set design.
“This was all thrown together last minute on a whim,” Powell said. “It was really just a moment of inspiration collaborating with a couple of students”
The overall set-up for “Almost, Maine” is quite different from most plays, with 20+ main characters and performed in “one singular cut” sophomore Geri Dingman said.
“All the scenes are happening in one moment during the show,” Dingman said. “I think it does emphasize the idea of the weight of a single moment.”
The change of having a romantic-comedy show prepared students to play completely different characters to what they’re used too.
“For me, it was something that I had to go out of my comfort zone for,” sophomore Sarah Kapoor said. “I’m used to Wizard of Oz and all of the fictional stuff, this was more like romance and comedy.”
Throughout the preparation of this play, students had to put themselves into more realistic roles.
“I learned a lot of stuff from these characters and from my director Mr. Powell,” Kapoor said. “The best thing I learned to show is ‘Be In The Moment’, he kept saying this every rehearsal and it has helped me so much to focus on the present.”