On January 26, 2018 Kempsville High School performed the Night of One Acts; a yearly tradition. This year, 2 of the 3 plays were chosen and directed by students.

The night began with a comedy titled Café Murder, written by Nathan Hartswick, which had been selected and directed by junior Elaina Augustus. Augustus also performed a main role in the play, as a private detective, but that came as a surprise.

“We had two people drop. I wasn’t even supposed to be the detective. We had someone drop last minute – the week before the show. So I had to pick it up because we couldn’t find anyone to fill it,” Augustus said.

Part of the problem was caused by the five snow days that landed in the middle of rehearsals, which took a toll on practice hours and ended up causing the performance date to be changed. Despite the problems, the students still put hard work into each of their plays, and the directors were happy with the results.

“It was a short amount of time; we only had a week to really prepare, but they pulled it together really well and I’m proud of them,” said Brianna Jones, who directed the second play of the night, Bullied, Bungled and Botched.

Bullied, Bungled and Botched was a series of personal monologues from a handful of persons that were all loosely connected through their school. There was Luke, a boy who was looking for his own ‘exclusive villain arrangement’ to help him with bullies, and Layla, who always carried stuffed animals to help with panic attacks, as well as a girl named Janey, who had been bullied and was struggling with isolation and depression.

This play dealt with serious topics and had a very bittersweet ending. It was well done and performed rather convincingly; however, it was an experience that could have been enhanced with a trigger warning at the beginning.

This was the first time KHS had performed Café Murder and Bullied, Bungled and Botched, unlike the last play, The Ricciones, which was written by Kempsville Alumni Jacquie Lipke, and had been performed once before at the Virginian Thespian Conference.

The Ricciones was a comedy that hilariously offset the serious tone of the play before it. It was about a big, boisterous family that argued over everything but always had each other’s backs. It also had a dose of queer representation, a rarity in most teen productions, and the actors interacted with the ease one would expect in a major production.

Pandora George, who played Noah Riccione, said her favorite part is the end of the play where the characters break down and just go: “who cares what happened tonight; so what: she’s going into the peace corps, so what: he’s gay – lets just hug it out like a family.”

The Riccionies will before performed once more by the same cast for VHSL theater competitions on February 10, 2018.