NHS Actors to Perform Rude Mechanicals <br>at NHS and Holderness

New Hampton School theatre students have been hard at work since returning form Winter break rehearsing for the winter play The Rude Mechanicals. Rehearsing through the month of January is nothing new to these students. Normally, the winter play is a full-length production that is performed midway through February. This year, however, something is different. The Rude Mechanicals will be produced in cooperation with another local school.

For the first time, New Hampton School and Holderness School will present a festival of One Act Plays that will give both school audiences an opportunity to see something different. For Winter Carnival, each school will perform at the other School’s venue, as well as its own.

On Friday, January 29, Holderness School will travel to NHS where they will perform Christopher Durang’s An Actor’s Nightmare along with New Hampton’s production of The Rude Mechanicals. The show will begin at 6bpm in the McEvoy Theater. On Saturday, January 30, New Hampton will have the opportunity to tread upon Holderness’s stage when Rude Mechanicals travels to the Hagerman Auditorium for a 7:30 pm performance. It is an exciting time for performing arts in Central New Hampshire!

The Rude Mechanicals

from William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream

Adapted and directed by Meredith C. Brown

Named for their occupations as skilled manual laborers, a group of amateur (mostly incompetent) actors from around Athens, looking to make names for themselves by having their production chosen to be performed as the entertainment for the royal wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, gather to rehearse the historical drama of Pyramus and Thisbe. Their incompetence and complete exhilaration at performing drive them in their preparations to their big performance. What kinds of show are they going to have for the Duke!

New Hampton School’s actors include: Melanie Margeson, Peter Gorman, Amanda Brady, Baxter Mattes, Hermes Xie, Allie Andrews, Kellon Olusola, Marci Weinstein, Marquice Jackson, Irene Shultz, and Jason Alexander.

Performance at New Hampton School on Friday January 29 at 6 pm.

An Actor's Nightmare

By Christopher Durang

Truly an actor's nightmare to wander on stage and not know your lines. Worse yet, not even know the play you are performing. Poor George finds himself in the middle of a scene from Private Lives missing one cue after another only to shift to Hamlet, and then a play by Samuel Beckett, until he finally finds himself ready for the axe of the executioner in A Man for All Seasons. When George finally gets his lines right, he is denied a well-earned curtain call!

Holderness School actors include Jeff Wasson, Kristen Walters, Brette Harrington, Nick Cushing, Lucy Copeland, and Will Hoeschler.  The show is directed by Monique Devine.

Performance at Holderness School is on Saturday, January 30, at 7:30 pm.