With a wide grin, Amadi Lasenberry ’17 wraps herself in a black blanket to disappear from the audience, as a purple light shines down on her. Playing the Cheshire Cat, she reads her lines from a sheet in front of her and winks at Eastlyn Frankel ’18, who plays Alice in the play “Alice In Wonderland” last Friday night. Audience members laugh loudly as the lights slowly fade into another scene.
“It was pretty fun because we didn’t have to memorize any lines, so it was a lot of blocking and acting it out and it was easier to get into your character because of not memorizing lines so we were just able to act and stuff.” said Lasenberry.
“Alice In Wonderland,” adapted by Jason Pizzarello from Lewis Carroll’s original 1865 novel, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” was performed in the Theater Classroom. Hosted and directed by DramaLab Producers, Hannah Berkowitz ’17, Janet Conklin ’17, and Kalina Ko ’17, the play expressed the mad energy of “Alice in Wonderland” by using bright lights and colorful scenery with tapestries and fake plants in the background.
“I really liked the idea of doing some sort of whimsical play like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where you can sort of go wild with the lights and set. We couldn’t get too elaborate [with the set] because it is a black box theater, so it’s kind of created for a minimalistic style, so we did a lot with lights,” said Conklin.
In her role as Tweedle Dee, Riley Hughes ’17 wore a baseball cap and a Hawaiian shirt that was stuffed in the stomach with Mika Curran ’17 as Tweedle Dum. These looks were some of the many quirky and colorful costumes along with retro blue polka dresses and white floral organzas, or sheer fabrics.
“All the actors pretty much put their own costumes and makeup together. I think something that we did with the show that we typically don’t do with the black box shows is we did a lot of makeup and costuming and even though it was all done by the actors for their characters, they put a lot work into it and stuff like that makes the show better and it makes it easier to transport the actors to another place,” said Conklin.
Under a red light, the majority of the cast members met together in a scene where the Queen of Hearts, Lydia Paris ’17, screamed at Evelyn Wu ’18, playing the executioner, to chop off the heads of most of the characters. Cast members gave Paris their testimonies one by one and then ran out of the theater.
“I thought the play was super funny. It was really great. I noticed a lot of Seniors were in it and a lot of people who I hadn’t seen acting before were acting in it and even though some of them seemed new, they were all so impressive and the audience was hysterical with laughter. I was amazed that some of the actors were able to keep going because we were laughing so loud,” said Katherine Sweetser ’17, an audience member.
