GLOVERSVILLE — Gloversville High School’s Scitamard Drama Club students will bring the play “Little Women 2: Wrath of the Undead” — a comedic twist on the classic novel — to the stage next weekend.
“It’s a parody on 'Little Women,'” said club advisor Jennifer Flynn, “where the babysitter is putting the little boy she’s babysitting to bed, and he’s very bored by the story she’s telling him, so she keeps spicing it up by adding in all of his favorite things, like lightsabers and dinosaurs and zombies and the Terminator.”
Performances will be in the middle school auditorium on Friday, Jan. 12 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Jan. 13 at 4 and 7 p.m. Tickets are available for a $5 donation. Such giving is what helps the club continue.
“It’s a light-hearted show, and a good laugh,” Flynn said. “It’s a good way to support the kids and the arts. We’re very excited.”
This is the fourth production by playwright Don Zolidis which the club has taken on. The group had a Zoom call with Zoldis, who has written more than 100 plays and one-acts for teenagers, last year during which students had the opportunity to speak to him about his work and motivations.
The 20 students involved in this year’s play have been rehearsing once a week since October. Beyond performing on stage, Flynn said, the goal of Scitamard is to "get the kids as involved as possible."
Students help with building the sets, painting, costuming, lighting and other technical aspects of the productio. One of the students designed the play’s poster.
The one-act play runs about 40-45 minutes long, said Aaron Flynn, the show’s director and Jennifer’s husband.
“It’s a comedy, it’s silly and, in a short amount of time, it gives the kids the opportunity to do something different,” Aaron Flynn said. “Also, we get to trickle in some different things, like stage combat, and it may be attached to some literature they’re doing in school.”
Theater is something that was important to Aaron Flynn when he was younger, which he now gets to share with a new generation.
“It’s something the kids are interested in, and have a good time with, and we get to help them learn and help them do it,” he said.
The students’ involvement in theater also teaches them a lot of different beneficial life skills, said Jake VanEvery, the show’s technical director.
“Most people are terrified to give a presentation at work — stand up in front of people and do something,” VanEvery said. “Imagine the skills these kids are getting standing up in front of over 300 people. Now — in the real world, when they have to give a presentation to 10 of their work colleagues, they won’t be scared at all.”
Drama students are busy at Gloversville, Jennifer Flynn said. While preparing for “Little Women 2,” auditions were also recently held for the school’s spring musical, “Emma: A Pop Musical,” a modern take on an 1815 Jane Austen novel, which will be performed March 8-10.
“What I like about having a non-musical and a musical is that we get a different group of kids for the play than we do for the musical,” Jennifer Flynn said. “Some of them overlap, of course, [but] the play and the musical are very different. To keep an audience’s interest in a play is tricky — without the music, without the song and the dance, it takes a different skill set, and we’re happy to provide both opportunities.”