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8th Graders Before You Have Met the Challenge 2011 Cruise Control - On an ocean liner traveling to Italy, Security Guard Scooter has more than he can handle with teenaged boys daring each other to new lows in pranks, a phantom thief stealing items from rooms, and the disappearance of the captain. Meanwhile, the ship seems to be veering towards a hurricane. Our team of students put this together with less than the usual amount of time, and only forty-five minutes' rehearsal with lights! Normal People - The choir, with some actors added, created this musical. The small town of Normal, West Virginia celebrates its 250th anniversary on a day in early summer. From sunrise to sundown, characters young and old make up their minds about who they are, whom they'll love, and whether to stay in Normal or hit the road. They speak dialogue and tell their stories in songs, some original and some taken from pop charts. Call of Haiti - Banned from playing the violent video game Call of Duty ("COD"), the church youth group of Saints Crossing, Iowa, sets up an underground arcade -- breaking several laws and commandments in the process. Their punishment: sixty days without electronics, doing community service in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. They learn to lose their obsession, until they discover the truth about the charitable organization "Call of Haiti," and, soon, their zombie-fighting skills come in handy. Performed March 3, 2011. 2010 What Indian Food Can Do For You - The small Asian-Indian character Chad believes that he can generate super-human heat, thanks to his diet of spicy curry chicken nuggets. He convinces his friends to take super-hero treatments, too, all of them unaware that the genetic engineering experiment that gives them their powers is really just a placebo. Still, it's enough to beat back the villains whose terroristic plot threatens the internet. 2009 Scam - Cassie, a sophomore at a boarding school in Maine, is writing a romantic novel when the school's most "popular" (and vicious) Senior girl seduces Sam, Cassie's boyfriend. When Sam apologetically tells Cassie the bad news, she answers on impulse that she's relieved, because she's had a new boy friend since the summer, the handsome young movie star Cam O'Leary. But now she has to enlist her friends to make "Cam O'Leary" real, creating his whole life on the internet. This Sam - Cam scam spirals out of control when someone uses "Cam O'Leary's" PayPal account to fund a prank aimed at the town's corrupt cops. It was a student's idea for this play to begin this play with a single continuous stream of gossip, spoken by all the cast. We let each act grow out of a stream of gossip, and we could dispense with scenes and scenery. The play was performed in mid-October 2009. TXT - The title suggests both the numerous text messages that propel the plot, and the setting in a small Texas town. The story involves cheerleaders, ex-football players, a diamond ring, 400 bananas (with blender), and a criminal gang from Chicago. Produced in spring of 2009. Action - One hour before a meeting with a Hollywood producer, aspiring script writer Louis taps away on his laptop in a corner of a city Starbucks. With help from friends, he finds enough inspiration in the true-life dramas all around him to imagine four different movies involving the same characters and the same situations: a super - hero film, a vampire chiller, a hybrid chick - flick Western, and, of course, a musical. You can listen to the original songs here: At Starbuck's Dream Venti His Own Medicine Read the lyrics here 2008 DARK HARBOR - Teens come to High Tide, a summer camp near the town of Dark Harbor, in the shadow of an old lighthouse. They tell ghost stories around a camp fire, but that's when the really scary stuff comes out: they are all troubled children of violent prisoners. There were enough red herrings here to stock a fish market: the mysterious boat anchored beyond the camp, the evidence that someone lives in the abandoned lighthouse, the questions around a former camper named Phoenix, the overheard conversation of the scary security guard, and a game of "truth or dare" that leads to a series of mishaps on the night of a terrible storm. FOREIGN AFFAIRS - The American students who come to study at Brussels comment on its "magical" atmosphere and "fairy tale" architecture. That sets the scene for a magical romantic comedy. By the end of their first week, the Americans are trying new identities and involved in new relationships. By the night of the midsummer festival, the young people are set for their happiest night ever -- but an angry father arrives from the US, a Mafia gangster springs his "sting" operation, a jealous young man confronts his two-timing fiance, an American novelist reveals the truth behind a romance, and a friend's well-intentioned action leads to confusion and disaster. Only magic can reverse the wreck and save the day. 2007 UNDER THE SURFACE - During the fourth quarter, eighth graders first thought of adapting GREAT EXPECTATIONS, but they were taken by the idea of writing a murder mystery. Quickly, we came up with a victim, Lily, and a site: a mountain lake resort. The students would play her friends, summer regulars at the resort, and the action would begin the summer after, at a memorial service. Her body was never found, so she's now presumed dead. We improvised that service. It really came alive when our student Jacob walked on stage and said how sorry he was that Lily was gone, and another girl shouted, "What are you sorry for? You're the reason she's dead!" Unpacking that statement, we developed a script. We didn't decide until the last week and half what really happened. During the third quarter, students answered a questionnaire about what they wanted their play to be. The answers that caught on with the whole group were these: Let's have characters with comic book hero names and secret lives . . . A sports event . . . Mafia gang . . . Whatever, just have tons of action. The result was SPIDER WEB. The new President's daughter Brittney has had to leave her old high school, where she loved skateboarding and where she was known as "Spider." Already sick of being followed by secret service agents who keep her safe, and a young White House official who follows her to keep her from embarrassing the President, she arranges to return to her old school. Her re-entry disturbs the "web" of relationships among the skater girls, the basketball boys, the "popular" mean girls, and a couple of scheming Mafia types working undercover as janitors. 2006 During the third quarter, one class of eighth graders wrote an original play, beginning with only the notion, "Let's do something scary, because no other class has tried to." We adapted our play TRAPPED ON THE 75th FLOOR to fit the castle setting leftover from the Upper School's musical. It became "The Palace," a club on the 75th floor of a hotel downtown in Atlanta. The first image the audience sees is the figure of the Grim Reaper, standing on the staircase of a vast grey palace, standing beside a violent-looking abstract painting. Using isolated spotlights and sound effects, the play moves backwards and forwards in time, hearing court depositions after "the event," and seeing preparations before "the event," the play moves towards the night of the big charity masked ball. 2005 Between January 5 and March 4, 2005, two different eighth grade classes put together plays of their own. They performed their shows March 17 and 18, first for an audience of parents, and then for the whole middle school, with costumes, props, sets, lights, sound effects, and even some rap music. One play, CAPITAL CHAOS, bounces comically between famous sites in Washington, D.C., an eighth grade class's tour bus, and their hotel. On their last night in Washington, the characters' grand plans go awry, involving the police, the F.B.I., the air force, and the President's dog. Poster created by Kaley Tolar, with help from Margaret Rose Knox. The other play, ROPE BURN, follows a group of "problem" children as they endure forty days of "wilderness experience" in a secluded area of mountainous desert out West. While they develop life skills, they are unaware of a criminal plot that threatens their very survival. It's an adventure story with lots of comedy. Poster created by Brandi Ward. top     2004 HOW TO START A REVOLUTION IN YOUR MIDDLE SCHOOL. The title comes from the book by a fictional school counsellor whose lecture holds the story together. In act one, we follow the new girl "Joy" on a tour of her new school, as she sees how boys dominate girls and "popular" people dominate "nerds" and "punks." At the end of act one, she challenges her female classmates at a secret meeting to demand R-E-S-P-E-C-T from boys and from each other. The girls wear rings and develop a secret hand shake and take a vow: "Be nice to nerds, and the boys don't deserve us." In act two, the girls stand up to boys' bullying and befriend "nerds." The boys have a secret meeting of their own, led by popular boy "Mark" and the mysterious biggest bully of all, the one they call "Death, Jr." Act three is the big talent show, a celebration of the talents of the ones they called nerds and punks, and everyone seems happy. Then the "popular" girls perform the grand finale -- and the boys' counter-attack takes place. That's when Joy confronts Death, Jr. for their showdown, leading to a true revolution in all the students' attitudes. REAL WORLD FAIRY TALES Five independent plays all take their inspiration from fairy tale characters. Reality Check: Snow White gets a one-way ticket to the real world because kids today don't care about fairy tales. MagicMirror.com: A fortune-telling web site warns of misfortune at the Homecoming Dance. Kid Napping Robber who won't grow up meets boy who won't grow up, home alone in a talking "smart house." Dream Catcher The new girl at school has a slumber party that becomes a nightmare. What power does the "popular" girl have over everyone else at the sleeping beauty's new school? Pop Princesses They used one wish from a genie to become famous. Now, with two wishes to go, Jessica, J-Lo and Britney wonder if they're really living happily ever after? 2003 STARS Taking "stars" as a loose theme, the cast presented skits that varied in tone and approach. Teen aliens give powers to children on earth (for their intergalactic science fair project); teen goof-offs doing astronomy homework instead use their telescope to spy on an assault in progress across town; girls sneak into a nightclub under the stars; a young athlete dreams of basketball stardom; a scared girl learns self-confidence from a vision of Elvis (played by Mr. Dennis McElhaney); a date at a movie goes wrong, mirroring the action of the "stars" on screen; and a mother tries to live her dreams of being a dancing star through her daughter's life. TREASURE.NET Early in rehearsal, the cast decided to choose a single story line, with finding a treasure as the main goal. The class divided itself into groups. Each group answered these questions: What brings this group to the island, and from where? (We're talking motives, but also means of transport) What do they do immediately after arriving to get towards the treasure? What happens midway there to slow them down? Do they encounter each other? (As they got closer to the goal, groups of actors had to cooperate as they worked out dialogue for groups of characters). Mr. Smoot and volunteers worked out plot details. We used an internet glitch to explain how a Mafia e-mail to the Mafia "family firm" gets to a struggling owner of a "family farm." The same internet connection involves the executive of the IT company, and we put her under FBI investigation for stock fraud. A trio of juvenile delinquents in orange jumpsuits, bound at the ankles by a chain, became effective comic relief when, escaping from the prison farm, they stowaway on a private plane being used by the executive for her escape. We didn't know what the characters would find in the treasure chest until a brainstorming session just days before the performance. We ended up using EVERY idea, this way: at first, the chest was empty, then it turned out to be a decoy, but then the real one turned out to be filled with worthless stocks, but then one of those was a deed to property where Disney World now stands. So the ending tied all loose ends together. 2002 DANCING THROUGH THE DECADES Framed as a dance contest, we had a troupe of singer/dancers who performed pop music from different decades of the 20th century. Between dances, we saw short plays set in the different times: an ice-cream parlor that's really a 20s Speakeasy . . . brothers on the stairs of their apartment trying to make quick money during the Depression. . . a mix of people come to a political rally for different reasons on the Bicentennial (July 4, 1976), and overcome their disappointments with American life in time for the fireworks . . .teen age friends who have an unexpectedly crowded slumber party during the 80s. KEEPING SCORESThe audience came to the gym, where actors took up positions as score keepers, fans, coach, player (sitting on a row of chairs with teammates that we imagined there). Off to the sides, we saw flats to represent the girls' and boys' locker rooms. Skits were funny and also serious, and all connected. Jake Moore portrayed the star player. When he moved the ball, the actors (and audience!) cheered; whenever he froze in place, the action shifted to another area. A ref's whistle signalled a shift in scene. At the show's end, we had the final buzzer as Jake's winning shot went in, and actors mobbed him just like a real game -- along with the audience! 2001 FRIGHT NIGHT Starting their first rehearsal with the question, "What do you fear?" they based their skits on those fears of change, of embarrassment, of random violence, of sounds in the house at night. The skits were joined together by a frame story about a girls' slumber party. They tell each other scary stories about their worst fears, and at the end of each story, they "buried" a prop in a coffin that sat center stage for the whole show. PLAY! The audience sat on risers around a giant game board. Homes, cars, school, $$$ -- these were drawn in the different squares. Furniture consisted of two giant red dice. Skits included "On the Line," in which football players interrupted the count for the last pass of a game to tell us their inner thoughts. Another play imagined a reunion of Walker students in fifteen years, sitting on the Walker playground, looking back. A theme song bound the show together: There are losers and winners, Pros and beginners, Good guys and sinners When you play!. . . top

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