Plains Drama Club provides comic relief

PLAINS – The Plains High School Drama Club took the stage with a performance of The Family Bytes on both Friday and Saturday night.

After just a short six weeks of practice, the performers took the stage with all the confidence in the world. And with a handful of newbies – that was quite the feat.

The play was surrounded around a vampire family with the last name of Bytes. Elvira Bytes (played by Hanna Knight) had witnessed a crime committed by the two most powerful thugs in town.

Along with the mother vampire, her husband, Barnabas Bytes (played by Tiga Wood), son Jason Bytes (played by Douglas Damschen), daughters Scarlett Bytes (played by Tierra Person) and Raven Bytes (played by Shayna Burgess), all had to stay in a safe house under the watchful eyes of two detectives.

Detectives Lacey (played by Rachael Knight) and Cagney (played by Jena Peterson), were in charge of watching the strange family. Throughout the performance the Bytes family attempted to hide the fact that they were vampires, remaining very secretive.

Two mobsters, Minnie the Mouth( played by Tieja Gill) and Lucky Lucy (played by Jessica Legard) were on a mission to find the Bytes and shut them up.

In a series of hilarious scenes, the Bytes managed to stay undercover dealing with a variety of different issues. The son Jason Bytes had grown an infatuation to the movie Twilight and was convinced that he was a werewolf – a vampire’s worst enemy. Throughout the play, Jason tried to convince his family that he was indeed a werewolf, a feat that proved to be difficult. His sister Scarlett ridiculed him often while his other sister Raven always used a logical explanation for his actions.

As the play progressed, vampire Raven befriended Candy (played by Tanna Cole) Candy was an active gym-goer and treated her body as a temple, in return having very pure blood. The Bytes were tempted to indulge in a snack, however, the family had put those ways behind them and were more humane when it came to their eating habits.

It was later discovered that Candy was hired on by both Lucky Lucy and Minnie the Mouth as a hit woman to shut the family up. After sneaking back into the house when the detectives were out and about, Candy attempted to hold the family up.

However, Scarlett used her handy dandy voodoo doll to deter her. Controlling Candy, Scarlett managed to scare her out of the job. As she left the safe house, she promised to never come back again. Once she reported to the mobsters, the ladies took things into their own hands. However, their efforts would also be unsuccessful.

As they stormed the Bytes’ home, Barnabas hypnotized the two criminals, controlling their every move. The suspects were apprehended, pleasing Lieutenant Kojak (played by Ashlyn Meckler.)

After the success of the takedown went to Lacey, a detective who had never been entrusted a big case during her time at the department, Detective Benson (played by Jayden Almon) had to book the two thugs, crediting Lacey for solving the ultimate crime.

The play provided a comic relief to all those in attendance, as the performers showed off their skill sets to the crowd.

During the second night of performances, the Sanders County Fairgrounds Pavilion was packed to standing room only. Both nights drew in impressive crowds.

“Overall, they did awesome,” said Assistant Director Cathy Emmett. “For as many new people as we had, they just worked really well together and we had so much fun with it.”

Emmett said all of the kids improved tremendously over the six week period and she is excited to see what other productions the kids will bring to life.