Several area schools will be competing in the District One Act Play meet Thursday in Spur. Performances get underway at 1 p.m. and run back-to-back in the Spur Auditorium.
Guthrie High School will be performing “The Beggar’s Opera,” in which a ragtag company of beggars in Victorian London tell the bitter tale of the predatory outlaw known as MacHeath, who secretly marries the daughter of an underworld boss but is soon betrayed by his sinister in-laws and sent to prison. “The Beggar’s Opera” is directed by Amy Richardson, Kelly Johnson and Melissa Everson.
Jayton will be performing “Don Quixote,” which follows the adventures of the title character and his servant, Sancho Panza. The play, directed by Hillary Bleiker, is about an eccentric old man who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his grasp on reality and decides to become a knight wandering on chivalrous adventures.
Motley County High School will present “The Greek Mythology Olym- piaganza,” in which two battling narrators attempt to cover the entirety of Greek mythology using audience participation, costume-changes and general theatrical frivolity. Creation myths such as Pandora’s Box and Cronos and the Titans jostle for space with other famous myths like Jason and the Argonauts (the original Super Friends). Culminating in a heart-pounding, fiveminute, two-actor version of the Iliad, this fast-paced, free-wheeling play is wild, silly and hilarious for all ages.“The Greek Mythology Olympiaganza” is directed by Courtney Mendolla.
Spur High School will perform “A Thousand Cranes” by Kathryn Schultz Miller. The play is based on a true story of Sadako Saski, who was 2 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on the small city of Hiroshima, Japan, where she lived. Sadako is now 12 years old and is an excellent athlete who races daily with her friend Kenji to prepare for an important race. However, one day while running, Sadako gets dizzy and falls. Hospitalized, she discovers she has “radiation sickness”—leukemia. Sadako’s grandmother was killed 10 years prior. Kenji arrives at the hospital and tells Sadako of the old story about the paper cranes. If a sick person folds a thousand origami cranes, the gods will grand her wish and make her healthy again. Sadako, sadly, loses her battle with leukemia; her friends build a monument in Hiroshima Peace Park in her memory.
