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gooseberryhigh2018-01-19 08:00 pm
WINTER PLAY PERFORMANCE
The Hunger
The stage is split in three locations: the graveyard, the manor's main hall, and the bedrooms. The graveyard and main hall are on the stage proper, and visually separated to make it look as though you walk through the graveyard to reach the front door of the manor. A walkway system has been built above and behind the graveyard/hall to represent the bedrooms. Actors can take the stairs up from the main hall to the bedrooms. Each "room" can be illuminated or darkened separately depending on if action is happening at the location.
| Verity Pennelegion | Jade Otterwell |
| Thomas Killigrew | Rupert Wick |
| Amity Carrington | Ariadne Flint |
| Felicity Pennelegion | Isabelle Sargent |
| Linton Worsley | Kurt Wolfhart |
| Jessie Dainty | Olivia Sanchez |
| Lyonette Pennelegion | Noel Finnigan-Thomas |
| Midas Carrington | Cameron Carney |
| Bernard Prentice | Yancey Montgomery |
| Sinclair | Spencer Sweet |
| Madame Calyptra | Riley Stamper |
| Dorinda Pennelegion | Zachary Zheng |
| Eugene Pennelegion | Pandora Lacey |
| Non-Speaking Roles | Gabriela Flores |
| (Trees, Ghosts, Demons) | Jefferson Key |
| Lucas Kowalski | |
| Violet McGonagall | |
| Susana Velasquez |
CREW
| Director | Micah St. Clair |
| Stage Manager | Todd Skynner |
| Property Master | Cassius Holcomb |
| Costumes/Makeup | Cole Moss |
| Set Design | Estella Morales-Tran |
| Production Assistant | Calvin Evercreech |
| Other Crew | Reece Downing |
| Ennis Harper | |
| Regan Hobbs | |
| Chloe Shepherd | |
| Solomon Webb |
ACT 1
It's a dark and stormy night. The story begins with Verity's arrival to her ancestral home to pay her respects to her dead father. She meets Jessie, the manor's the sole remaining servant, and a pair of bachelors, Linton and Thomas, who are friends of Verity's younger sister. Thomas flirts with Verity, but is rebuffed as she ignores him to ask Jessie to fetch her sisters. We are quickly introduced to Verity's family: little sister Felicity, who immediately hugs her; brother-in-law Midas, who leers at Jessie as she excuses herself; and older sister Amity, who gives Verity a chilly reception and seems more preoccupied with trying to convince her young son, Eugene, to go back to bed. Verity's mother, Lyonette, comes in with Bernard, her physician's old physician, and tells everyone she gathered them for an important reason.
(Cameron Carney pours wine for the characters in the scene. Unfortunately, there was a mixup (or sabotage?) with the props and some real wine is served, resulting in Cameron, Rupert Wick and Olivia Sanchez getting tipsy for the first act.)
A large table is carried into the main hall. ([Crew Member D], dressed head-to-toe in black, accidentally stomps on the toes of [Cast Member E] as they're helping to carry the table in.) Lyonette introduces everyone to Madame Calyptra, a famous spiritualist who will leading them in a seance. Midas explains to Verity that Lyonette is a crackpot who's convinced that the house is haunted by her dearly departed husband because of strange noises and broken china. On the other side of the room, Thomas complains to Linton about Muggle superstitions, and we learn that he's a wizard and Linton forced him to come because Linton and Felicity are eloping now that her controlling father is dead.
Lyonette, Amity, Verity, Felicity, Midas, Thomas, Linton and Bernard all sit around the table and join hands with Madame Calyptra, who leads them in summoning the spirit of Lucian Pennelegion. Jessie stands to the side, comforting a cranky Eugene. Beside her is senile old Grandma Dorinda, who sits in her rocking chair. The stage darkens, and evil demons descend on the family, and they all reach for Felicity, who screams.
Now looking crazed, Felicity climbs onto the table and tears at her clothes [Director's note: she's wearing a shift underneath, it's totallyschool appropriate!!!!] and she calls out the sins of everyone around the table. Felicity is obviously possessed, and the evil demons stop anyone else from pulling her off the table. Madame Calyptra is horrified; this is not what she expected to happen. Only Grandma Dorinda seems unshaken; she rises from her chair and calls out to her granddaughter. "Where are his booooones?" Felicity laughs maniacally. "Ask them! These cowards, these killers, these avaricious deceivers! They know what they've done!" She raises her hand and points to Lyonette and Bernard.
"Felicity!" Jessie rushes the table now, fighting hard against the evil demons that try to pull her away. (In the chaos, Riley Stamper accidentally knocks a tall candelabra over, and lights fire to Isabelle Sargent's costume. Ariadne Flint casts Aguamenti to put out the flames. Miraculously, no one breaks character.) Jessie talks to the possessed girl about their close bond, and begs Felicity to return to her. Felicity faints on the table. The demons disappear.
ACT 2
Act 2 is where the bulk of the rewrites happened, and it shows, being the most chaotic and least coherent part of the play. Plot-holes abound. A rough outline:
-
Madame Calyptra calls the family cursed, and says she can't stay a minute longer, even with the thunderstorm outside. Amity takes charge and tells her husband to escort the psychic, and for Jessie to take Eugene to his room. Midas calls Amity a nag behind her back, and flirts with Madame Calyptra as he walks her under a umbrella, through the graveyard between the manor and the main road. Menacing trees loom over them. Midas is about to kiss Calyptra in the graveyard when the Monster emerges from the darkness and disembowels Calyptra. She screams hysterically, trying to hold her guts in. As the Monster turns on Midas, the stage goes dark.
-
Thomas and Linton help carry an unconscious Felicity to her room. Bernard checks her vitals and says there's nothing he can do for her, and leaves. Amity and Verity argue over who should stay with Felicity, with Amity throwing in Verity's face: "It's eight years too late for you to act like a caring sister." Amity shuts herself in Felicity's room. Linton suggests they all get drunk and Thomas convinces Verity to join them. (There is an excised scene where Linton and Thomas regale Verity with their schoolboy antics and also inexplicably make out, but it didn't move the plot forward whatsoever. The scene was still in the script until opening night, though, causing some confusion as the actors continue acting when they're supposed to exit. The director orders [Crew Member J] to bang the thunder sheet wildly while [Non-speaking Cast Member K], dressed as a tree, runs onto the stage waving their massive branch arms and chases the actors off.)
-
Jessie leaves Eugene in the care of Grandma Dorinda, who tells him the legend of the man-eating monster who comes out during storms. There's lots of cackling. Jessie sneaks back to Felicity's room. Amity is gone and Felicity is lying motionless in her bed. Jessie monologues about how she loves Felicity and how Felicity doesn't need to marry in order to be free. Jessie kisses her, and Felicity wakes up. Felicity asks after Linton.
-
A distressed Lyonette retreats to her room. Bernard joins her. It's revealed that they fell in love and Lyonette convinced Bernard to poison Lucian Pennelegion in his final days. As they argue, Lyonette believes sees ghosts in the room with them. Bernard, concerned, turns his back to get her a sedative. Goaded on by the ghosts to "avenge" her husband's murder, Lyonette stabs Bernard with a letter-opener and leaves. Bernard is bleeding but not dead... until the Monster enters the room. Bernard screams "I'm being eaten aliiiiiive!" as the Monster gnaws off his limbs.
-
Jessie and Felicity join Linton, Thomas and Verity in the main hall. Verity reveals she is a ship captain and can officiate a wedding. Linton urges Felicity to marry him now, but she suddenly has cold feet. Jessie tries to cover for Felicity by saying the circumstances aren't romantic enough for a wedding. Thomas thinks Verity looks ill. Verity tells him she's fine. Thomas is insistent and grabs her hand, and when she pulls away, she loses her glove. Felicity screams. "Why do you have a hook hand!" "A vicious monster ate my flesh hand," Verity explains. "Like a shark?" Linton asks. Midas staggers into the scene, covered in blood and raving about a creature. "It ate the psychic's guts like slurping up spaghetti!"
-
The young people leave Midas on a couch and run off to find Lyonette, Amity and Eugene. Thomas and Verity find Bernard's dead body in the master bedroom. There's a woman's scream from outside the window. "Amity!" Verity grabs her father's hunting rifle off the wall and says she's hunting the beast. Thomas runs after her.
-
Linton, Felicity and Jessie go to Eugene's room. He's gone. They try to wake up Grandma Dorinda, sitting in the corner, but she doesn't respond. A heart attack? As Felicity cries over her dearly departed grandmother, the Monster creeps up behind the three and attacks. In the fracas, Felicity runs to protect Jessie, leaving Linton open. The Monster slices Linton's throat open, and drags his body away. "I suppose the wedding's off," says Jessie. "Shall we elope instead?" Felicity asks. The girls hold hands and just leave the play entirely.
-
Midas, still on his couch, is drinking straight from the decanter when Verity and Thomas pass him on their way out of the manor. He doesn't seem concerned about the fate of his wife and son. Verity is angry and says she'll save them herself. ("How can you fire a rifle with a hook hand?" "Just watch me.") After she and Thomas leave, the Monster approaches Midas. Now very drunk, Midas looks at it and says, "Darling? Is that you?" He approaches the Monster, but a trap door opens underneath him, and he falls through.
The stage goes dark. We hear Midas scream. "No! No! It can't be! Noooo!"
ACT 3
Verity and Thomas run into the backyard graveyard, where they find Lyonette (still haunted by taunting ghosts and one extra menacing tree) trying to dig up her dead husband's grave. She says the monster is Verity's father, and poison wasn't enough to kill him. "I should have been braver and killed him myself," Lyonette says. "Now we must burn his bones to stop him!" Thomas points out it doesn't make sense for Lucian to be the Monster andburied in the grave. The script doesn't follow up on this, because it's a bad script and also because the Monster appears! Verity fires on the Monster but misses, then Thomas gets in the way of her gun while trying to protect her. He tries to hit the Monster with spells, so the Monster turns and gruesomely decapitates Lyonette instead. [Director's note: Or gruesomely kills her some other way if we can't figure out how to make decapitation work????] Sinclair emerges from the trees and shoots the Monster, who runs away.
Sinclair is revealed to be the old butler-in-training to the Pennelegions. He left upon learning a horrible secret: the family is cursed, the eldest Pennelegion male turns into a monster on full moon nights. When Verity was 17, she was attacked by a monstrous creature who bit off her hand and would've killed her if Sinclair hadn't stepped in with a red-hot poker. Upon death, the monster transformed into a human: Zacharias Pennelegion, Verity's grandfather and Lucian's father. Knowing he would be hanged for murdering his employer, Sinclair fled the manor with a traumatized Verity. They found a doctor who bound Verity's wounds, and she refused to ever return home again.
"You found a new hand," Sinclair observes, of Verity's sharp steel hook hand. Sinclair explains that he's been living in the woods around the manor, watching for when the curse took hold in Lucian Pennelegion. "Your father only had daughters. The curse was supposed to die with him," says Sinclair. "Except for Amity's son," Thomas points out. "Isn't he technically the oldest male with Pennelegion blood?" Eugene is the Monster!
Verity takes this news coldly. She's willing to kill a child to protect her sisters. Thomas tries to change her mind, but Sinclair sides with Verity. They return to the manor, and find Amity sitting on the couch, crying and covered in blood. Thomas and Sinclair proceed to the bedrooms to find Eugene/Monster, while Verity holds her sister in her arms as Amity tells her of how she used to be happy and in love. She had dreams and ambitions, but she gave it up for her husband, thinking he was worth it the sacrifice. "Now I'm so empty, Verity," Amity sobs. "He's gone, and nothing can fill me, even though I keep eating." Verity pauses. "Eat?"
(The main hall goes dark, and Eugene's bedroom lights up. Or that's what's supposed to happen, except there's an awkward pause of several seconds when Ennis Harper, operating the lights from above the stage, is shocked by a pale boy crawling across the ceiling. The boy smiles unnaturally wide at them, and skitters away into the darkness.)
Thomas, with his wand out, finds Eugene sitting beside Grandma Dorinda's rocking chair. Thomas wants to ask questions but Sinclair bursts into the room, ready to kill Eugene and end the curse once and for all, but Grandma (who was not dead, only deeply asleep) grabs Thomas' wand and hexes Sinclair so hard that he's thrown across the room and cracks his head against the wall. Thomas demands to know what is going on. Grandma tells him that the family curse afflicts everyone in the Pennelegion bloodline, and only manifests when their true love is unfaithful. Lucian became a monster and had to be killed when Lyonette fell in love with Bernard, and now Amity is suffering because of her husband.
Thomas runs back to the main hall. Verity stands alone in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped around herself. "Verity, we must get out of here. This place is mad, and you're still in danger." She holds her hand out to him. "I know. You've been so brave, Thomas. Thank you." He takes her hand and pulls her close. "I only want to protect you. Since the first moment I saw you..." They lean in for a kiss. Verity stabs Thomas in the stomach with her hook hand. "And I only want to protect my sister," she says. The trap door opens behind him, and Verity pushes him through. Thomas' pained screams echo throughout the house, although with Midas yelling (also from under the stage) "oh God why is this happening!" as he watches his wife consume another victim. Grandma Dorinda calls down: "What do we do about this old butler?" Verity: "Save him for dinner!" The end.
» Before the Performance: It's the big night! Are you nervous? Do you just want this to be over? Did you lose track of a candelabra????
» The Stage: Cast and crew do their best to keep this bloated, nonsensical production from going off the rails.
» The Audience: For everyone who was trapped into watching this overlong disaster. Is it, like, really weird that there's Aurors sitting in the auditorium with you?
» After Party: Come congratulate your friends on a job well done! Cast, crew and their friends are invited to a little party to celebrate a successful winter play.
» OOC - Questions/Discussion
Re: OOC 🎭 QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION
Re: OOC 🎭 QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION
Re: OOC 🎭 QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION
Bless you Micah