There is something special about the Northeast Dubois Senior Play

The public is invited to the play this Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Northeast Dubois Intermediate School. Doors open at 1:30 p.m. and tickets are $5.

Alex Dooley appears in almost every scene of this year’s Northeast Dubois Senior Play.

He’s the blood-splatter guy in the playbill.

And, in this loose adaption of Game of Tiaras, Don Zigaris’ adaption of Shakespeare’s King Lear, featuring the 63 members of the Northeast Dubois graduating class, he gleefully explodes on stage as nearly every familiar princess is struck down in a bloody, well, simulated bloody affair.

With cultural trope lines and forgotten princesses–pointing at you, Gen Z; Ariel was the Gen X princess–making their stage debut before being summarily executed, the production continues an annual tradition that began in 2009 with Superintendent Dr. Tara Rasche when she taught junior and senior English and Speech classes at Northeast Dubois.

The students were taking Genres of Literature, and she decided to give them an option once they got to the drama section.

“I posed the question to the class, ‘Would you like to do a senior play,'” she explained. “And they were all about it.”

With zero budget, she and the seniors assembled a production of Grease. “We covered the (educational) standards performing the play,” Dr. Rasche said. “And it was really fun.”

The production was pretty much student-led. Using an adapted Grease script, the seniors put on three shows for the schools, with backdrops and props made from donated cardboard and costumes made by one of the classes. “We didn’t really have any rehearsals,” Dr. Rasche explained. We did the first performance for the junior high kids in the morning, and that was our rehearsal.”

The show for the elementary schools followed, and the final performance was for the high school.

“The public could come to any of the shows,” she said. “It was really something. That’s how it began, but I didn’t know we had started something.”

Since it was student-led, Dr. Rasche continued allowing them to choose whether to perform a Senior Play. In 2010, the class wasn’t interested in performing a play, but in 2011, the senior class demanded it.

“The first day of class, they said, ‘We have to do it,'” Rasche remembered.

They put on Wizard of Oz. “That one was probably my favorite,” she added.

The next year, the seniors did Cinderella–Dr. Rasche’s twin daughters performed in it.

She was involved in one more group of seniors putting on a play before transferring from the classroom to a new position.

But the Senior Play continued with the next teachers, Tina Fawkes and Courtney Hopf, before stopping a few years ago.

Then, when Jamie Strange was hired last year, she sponsored the renewed Theatre/Drama Club and decided to bring back the senior play. “We did fundraising and we had a whole lot of support from the community,” she said.

As in the past, last year’s production was performed for all three schools, and a recording was shared with the seniors’ parents.

“I got really good feedback,” Jessica Reinbold, who also teaches English at the high school, noted. “It’s the reason we are doing a public performance this year.”

This year, Mrs. Strange chose Game of Tiaras because it met the English credit requirements and has a cast list large enough to fit the seniors needing the speech element of the course, though she did add a couple of princess roles to make it work.

“It’s a modernized version of King Lear,” Strange said. “It makes it a bit more relatable.”

The students taking Speech fill more than 30 performing roles, with the rest of the class filling the roles behind the scenes to bring the production together. Whether designing set pieces, tickets and costumes, constructing the sets, preparing costumes, or 3D printing props like the swords used throughout the play, the entire class brings it all together.

Many have taken on their roles with enthusiasm.

“I think sometimes we underestimate the ability of teenagers to grab hold and just run with something and learn in the process,” Strange said.

Senior Emily Recker handles marketing for the production and has a small part in the play before her character, Talking Teapot Lady, is quickly eliminated. “I remember seeing the Senior Play and really enjoying it,” she said, specifically mentioning the Lion King production held one year and its impact on her.

“It was so much fun,” she said. “I was little but I definitely remember it.”

The play and production also force students out of their comfort areas to participate in something new.

Cheyenne Mroz, who plays Peasant 2 and Tiana, added that it could be impactful for younger students who see a student-athlete they admire playing Prince Charming.

And, in the small community, these students have grown up together. In a way, this is their final hurrah before graduating.

“These are the people that we’ve been in classes with for the past 13 years,” Emily said. “We know it’s the last thing we all really get to work on together.”

On Wednesday, the Senior Play will be performed for the ninth through eleventh grades–its content is a bit mature for the younger audiences. This Sunday, the public can attend a single performance at the Northeast Dubois Intermediate School at 2 p.m. Doors open at 1:30 p.m. and tickets are $5 each and will be available at the door or can be prepurchased by contacting Mrs. Jamie Strange at the school.