By MITCHELL PEARL
For the second year now, Otter Valley’s award-wining theatre program will present a full-length production featuring underclass students. “The Witch’s Princess” will be presented Friday, May 9, and Saturday, May 10 at 7:30 PM on the Otter Valley stage. The play is directed by Katie St. Raymond, who joined Otter Valley as a social studies teacher last year with a significant background in theatre. She directed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” a year ago, which was the first Otter Valley production limited to the younger students.
“The Witch’s Princess” is a relatively new, funny adventure story by playwright Don Zolidis. While “The Witch’s Princess” is not yet a well-known play, the playwright Don Zolidis is a former high school and middle school theatre teacher and is the most-produced playwright in American schools. He has published more than 100 plays that have been produced in every state and 63 countries.
The play starts with a familiar trope: The main character’s mother—the queen—is dead on the first page. The kingdom is cursed, and the princess, played by Calle Gibbs, is led to believe that the only way to lift the curse is to slay the witch who is thought to have killed the queen. The king offers princess Alessandra’s hand in marriage to the knight who can slay the evil witch. But the knights who “try out” are ridiculous, and so there is only one thing for the princess to do: sneak out of the castle and try to kill the witch herself.
First, the princess assembles a team of friends for the adventure, a crack crew of the deadliest monsters in myth and legend to help. These are mythical creatures based on stories from around the world played by Asta Gamba, Winter Blaisdell, and Audrey Carrier. But as the adventure progresses, the princess discovers the monsters are not what they seem, and neither is the witch, or the curse, or the kingdom. A twisted, rollicking, and wild quest of magic and adventure follow. Other key roles are played by Siena Many and Avis Sumner.
By limiting the cast to mostly middle-school students and ninth graders, these younger players can take on the harder and more complicated roles that would otherwise be taken by upperclassmen. Jeffrey Hull, OV’s Theatre Department Director, had been looking for some time to be able to provide this opportunity for the middle schoolers, and Katie St. Raymond’s background and experience has now made it possible.
The students have been rehearsing four afternoons a week, and all are involved in set-building and learning other stagecraft skills. Some of the older Otter Valley students are helping with the “tech” work. There is palpable excitement among the students. They know it will be a challenge to “get it all together” by opening night, but they know they will pull it off. Their message to everyone is to come see the play, and they hope that the middle school play will inspire other students to work with the theatre.
Tickets are only five dollars and will be available at the door or online at Otter Valley Union High School Presents: The Witch’s Princess – Events. For additional information, go to Walking Stick Theatre’s Facebook page.
Looking ahead, the upperclass students of Otter Valley’s Walking Stick Theatre will be presenting “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)”—a hilarious romp through the works of Shakespeare—directed by Jeff Hull, on May 30 and 31. For many of the seniors, this will be their last opportunity to perform at Otter Valley.
