Hebron Academy

If the essence of theater is a contract by which actors agree to pretend if audience-members agree to believe, then the deal struck by the Hebron Middle School Drama Group in “Around the World in 8 Plays” was worthy of Donald Trump. Presented to a packed house at the Lepage Lecture Hall, the performance was as full of incident as the auditorium was of people, and thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end.

Written by Patrick Greene and Jason Pizzarello, the play enacts a series of folk tales from Czechoslovakia, South Africa, Russia, Japan, Brazil, India, Native America and Ireland, all tied together by narrators who do double duty as characters within the various skits. As complicated as this may sound from a staging standpoint, the recent production made perfect sense and any hiccups along the way were rendered moot by players whose stage presence and raw talent belied their years.

Serving as interlocutors whose purpose was to tell traditional stories in a modern idiom, the narrators delivered many of the most memorable lines, with star turns by Faraz Sanal ‘16, Charlotte Middleton ‘14, Nathaniel Bennett ‘16, Kelcey Robichaud ‘14, Janelle Tardiff ‘14, Owen Richmond ‘16, Elizabeth Pratt ‘15, and Eliot Ross ‘15.

Meanwhile, taking on roles as villagers, demons, princes, witches and various woodland creatures, the above were joined by character actors extraordinaire Sarah Brouwer ‘15, Riley Hemmings ‘16, Lindsey Keith ‘14, Lindsey Kenison ‘16, Sabrina Maamouri-Cortez ‘15, Field Peterson ‘15, Arianna Pinkham ‘15, Madison Prentice ‘16, and Walter Rasmussen ‘15.

Personal favorites: Kelcey Robichaud, scene-stealer as both precocious pigeon and Irish leprechaun (talk about range!); Charlotte Middleton as both narrator and caring Arapaho mom; and cheerful floor-sweeper Nathaniel Bennett (when it came to laughs, he really cleaned-up).

Congratulations and kudos to performers and production crew alike. With this kind of talent in the offing, the future success of Hebron theatricals is indeed a done deal. [For more photos click here.]

--DI