High School Students Perform Trouble in Tumbleweed
November 26, 2014
After a two-year intermission, the NCHS All-School Play returned to the stage. Students from all grades 9-12 starred in the production, a comedy set in the old west called Trouble In Tumbleweed. The play itself wasn’t anything special—a town full of crooked citizens trying to bribe a secret government agent, full of puns and turn-arounds and secret identities galore—but it was a very special performance, as I came to realize.
What struck me from the get-go was how excited the actors and actresses were about the play, and how enthusiastic they remained even after weeks of attending play practices at 6:30 A.M. every morning. Of course they were all scared out of their minds once it was time to actually perform it in front of an audience, but once they had tasted the limelight and heard the laughter and the applause, they could hardly contain themselves.
It helped that they had such a large audience watching them. Whether it was due to there being 19 kids in the play or to the fact that two years had passed since the last successful school play had been put on, the number of people who came to the play was remarkable. It was probably the largest crowd I’d ever witnessed come to the NCHS play, and I am thankful that the community came out to support the kids, and cheer them on, and make their acting debut spectacular for them.
The kids had so much fun putting on this play. It was great for me to see my first attempt at directing a play turn out to be a success, but it was so much more to see how much pleasure the kids reaped from doing this. It was a special and a unique experience that I know they will never forget.
