Lights … camera … action!

Northwest College put on the production of the Awesome 80’s Prom Dec. 7-8 at the Nelson Performing Arts auditorium, where approximately 150 members of the community attended.

A special additive to this play, different than performances previous, was the interactive angle to entice the audience and fire up the crowd.

“I liked and disliked the interactive part,”said junior Izaiah Zapata, who played Dickie Harrington and a varsity cheerleader. “For the most part, it was amazing talking to the other people throughout, but half of the people didn’t want to interact.”

This interactive play, arranged by Samuel French, Inc., helped to invite the audience to wear their prom regalia, making this an even more communal performance to encompass those who attended.

“This is a re-creation of a prom and the piece is highly interactive — even audience-participation dependent — asking folk to join in the fun seemed like the right thing to do,” said Fred Ebert, assistant professor of Speech Communications at Northwest College.

Originally, Ebert chose a British skit, but many complications arose.

“It was a mad dash,” Ebert said. “I chose to do The Awesome 80s Prom because I could quickly secure the rights and most importantly, I had a cast of folk that could pull it off.”

Ebert directed this play and those previous, such as last year’s production of It’s a Wonderful Life.

“This show was an entirely different style of production [than last year’s] where the audience was invited to be ‘characters,” Ebert said. “In this production, students built characters essentially from the ground up. In that sense, the difficulty for the actor was dramatically increased.”

Newer PHS students, like senior Alex Shuffield, who’ve had a passion for theatre shot to obtain Ebert’s standards.

“I have always really enjoyed [acting],“ Shuffield said, who played the role of Molly Parker. “With performances, it’s really cool to how people enjoy it and inspires people to come and try to audition too.”

With 18 actors and 22 volunteers and stage crew, it brought multiple challenges to the table, but Ebert’s production brought an estimated 150 attendants each night.

“I want to express my appreciation to the community at large and the high school community for their support of this production,” Ebert said. “The audience’s willingness to participate was what made this show sing and I believe each of the actors did an exceptional job developing and performing the characters.”