Wm. E. Hay's annual play "Almost, Maine" may not have been as controversial as many thought, but it did its job none the less of entertaining and bringing home humour and poignance through a series of short plays.
With three shows for the community, including a dinner theatre, the play ran from Thursday to Saturday, from Dec. 1-3 at the Performing Arts Centre.
"This was a very different piece of production to be a part of because it was not one cohesive play," said Jennifer Rostad, production manager. "There was a lot of rotational supervising and then most of the accountability was on the students to be practising in individual rooms during rehearsals."
According to Rostad, each scene had its own tech as well.
"These students were fantastic because they were the ones offering ideas, critiques and helping run lines during rehearsals when actors were not working directly with Darren or had to be practising for additional scenes," Rostad explained. "It wasn't until our last week before show time that we truly began to see the magic of the ensemble of all the stories."
The play, touted as one about falling in and out of love was just that.
The talent of the cast was exceptional and led to the stories quite well – Her Heart, Sad + Glad, This Hurts, Getting It Back, They Fall, Where It Went, The Story of Hope and Seeing the Thing.
"Cast, crew, fashion designers, and the construction classes all had a hand in the aesthetic making of the stage," explained Rostad. "There was a fair bit of pre-thought and research put into how other productions had staged the play."
The feel of a rustic, small town was well brought out with the magic of snow and winter.
"Our students, Jenna, Hunter, Kali and Jessa put an incredible number of hours in with the fine tuning details of painting, placements, and fluffing snow," Rostad said. "While looking at the cast, which was primarily Darren's area, I feel like we were looking for strong personality connections as well as physical attributes between characters and students."
Originally, the play was meant to be acted out by four actors in total but Darren Fleischhacker, play director really wanted to create as many student opportunities as the roles would allow.
"We would like to definitely send a shout out to all the community businesses that were open to helping us advertise and especially to Bernie at Wells Furniture for selling tickets for us, Zitaruk family for the hoodies and to everyone that promoted our show by word of mouth and social media," Rostad added. "Our gratitude also extends to Kneeland-Teasdale from Cosmetology, Mr. Huo and team for the Dinner Theatre gourmet meal, Ms. Newbigging from Fashions, Mr. Clark from Building Constructions, Dale Brown from Welding, Rachelle Campeau for art pieces, moose, and various painted props, Mr. Rahn and Rebecca for the musical entertainment at the dinner theatre, Dave Morris from Comm. Tech and Loretta Lavallee, Cyndy Lovell and Carrie Resch for helping us with anything we asked."
Over the three days, about 350 people were entertained, they laughed, they cried and they took in the cynicism of love through the wonderful show put up by the high school, "Almost, Maine."