Students take part in gun play
Photos by Nick Ianniello Eric Lake (left) swindles Travis Stroot at poker in the Superior Drama Club’s presentation of Wildcat Katie Brown while Michelle Hapa’kova’ (left) and Jessica Yarnall watch at the high school Tuesday night. The club gave four presentations of the play.
The Superior High School Drama Club put on a presentation of the Western play “Wildcat Katie Brown” last week, complete with gun play, a handlebar mustache and a saloon brawl.
Parents and friends of the students piled into the Superior High School multi-purpose room Tuesday and Wednesday evenings to watch 14 of Superior’s finest thespians strut their stuff on stage.
“They’re always amazing and they’re always such hams. When the audience gets out there, it all of a sudden just explodes and they start doing all of the things I was trying to get them to do at rehearsal,” said play director and Superior High School English and Spanish teacher Carol Sullivan.
The students also presented their play to the elementary school Tuesday afternoon and to the high school students Wednesday afternoon.
The play told the story of Wildcat Katie Brown, an “ornery young woman” who has to save her hapless father’s property from a card-cheating lawyer.
This is Sullivan’s 26th play at Superior High School and she said by now she has the process figured out.
The students have been practicing all through March in the evenings for this play. Sullivan said that in order to pull the play off, she has to work around the schedules of athletes and other school activities. She said all but four of her actors were involved in some other sport or after school activity.
“In a rural school, if you want involvement, you’ve got to work around each other. The kids that do these things do it all,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan said she has done plays ranging in variety from pirate stories to classics, such as “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
“Sometimes it’s a detective mystery story; sometimes it’s a horror story,” Sullivan said.
She said she always picks a comedy because it gets the students interested.
“I just read plays every year and I just try to find one that looks fun to do, something new and different. I haven’t done a Western in a while, so I thought it was time to do another. Plus, I have the names of all the kids who are signed up to do it by the time I pick out the script, so I keep in mind their personalities and I keep that in mind when reading a play,” Sullivan said.
For costumes, Sullivan said she has her students round up clothes wherever they can find them.
“Everybody in the cast knows somebody who knows somebody who has something. I’ve been collecting these kinds of props for years,” Sullivan said.
She added that the Women in Timber are always a big help finding older looking Western clothes.
Sullivan said the money the club takes in at the door goes to pay for the expenses of the play.
“We just kind of hope to break even and we usually do,” Sullivan said.
She said that in the past, extra money raised has been used to buy new curtains for the stage. Sullivan said she is trying to save enough money to improve the lighting.
According to Sullivan, the play was a huge success and the students did better than she anticipated.
“I think they did really well. It always amazes me, considering how rough it always looks at rehearsals,” Sullivan said.