Imagine sitting down at your local high school’s play, to immediately see a student frantically running around the audience looking for a missing prop. As the curtain rises, a set piece immediately falls to the ground. But what may seem like a disaster is all part of the plan for Olathe West’s production of “The Play That Goes Wrong.”
The show centers around six actors, a stage manager and a sound and lights technician as they attempt to put on a murder mystery play. It is full of comedic disaster where, true to its title, things go horribly wrong at every turn.
Theater director Alisha Morris chose this as the all-school play for this year because she thought her students were up to the challenge.
“One of the reasons I chose this so specifically for this year was because our musical in the fall [Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat] was a little more of what I would consider an easier musical, so I wanted a more challenging mainstage play,” Morris said.
In order to pull off the comedic mishaps of the show, it took a specially built set. Morris opted to buy a pre-built set from Blue Springs South High School.
“I chose to purchase the set because I knew that this show would be hard enough to put together already and also there’s of lot of trick things that happen during the show that I did not want to figure out how to have happen on my own—the actors’ safety was probably my biggest concern,” Morris said.
Along with the unpredictable practical errors, the show features multiple on-stage fights and stunts that needed to be carefully choreographed in order to prevent an actor from actually getting injured. Morris opted to hire a professional fight and choreographer to help make sure everything went wrong — safely.
Junior Ashlyn Warren detailed how the rehearsal process was changed for actors with this new addition.
“Learning this show has definitely been a struggle—you have to remember everything and make sure you are doing everything right—if you don’t, something could go actually wrong and you could hurt somebody,” Warren said.
Warren is the understudy for the role of Chris, who plays Inspector Carter in the show within the show. When she is not performing in this role, she, along with seven other understudies will be serving as “backstage crew members,” which is a slightly more complex version of a “run crew” in a typical production. The crew is also responsible for a few humorous interactions with the audience before the show starts, including a gag involving a search for a missing Nickelback CD.
“We do all the gags for the show, which are all of the funny bits that happen, like the platform that falls, all of the items that fall on stage and the water that comes out of the pipe,” Warren said.
“The Play That Goes Wrong” is the theater program’s first show of the semester, following the Kansas Thespians Festival in early January. Olathe West earned 13 superior “Thespys,” including two perfect scores. The department also was awarded with a Kansas Thespians Theatre Education scholarship and a performance in the Thespy showcase. In the showcase, Warren performed “Finest Dreams” from “Little Women” alongside juniors Nora Brown and Lydia Treff and senior Jameson Mangold.
“It was genuinely a surreal experience. There were so many theater kids in the room that were happy for everyone and everyone at Olathe West was so supportive. Overall, it was a great experience,” Warren said.
The department plans to use the momentum from the festival to make “The Play That Goes Wrong” a hit. Tickets for the show are now on sale at owtheatre.com. The show will be performed in the auditorium March 6 through 8.
“I love seeing everyone’s improv and how they make the show funny. It’s just so fun to see everyone’s comedy and character shine through,” Warren said.
