For the first time in its 30-year history, the JHS Thespians have been chosen to appear at the 2019 International Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Nebraska. They will be performing Laura Lundgren Smith’s one-act play, “The Shape of the Grave” there on June 28.
The group’s longest-serving member, Simonie Mendenhall, said the achievement has been “a long time coming.”
On Saturday, June 8, they will be performing the play — and another one-act play, Zona Gale’s “The Neighbors” — to raise money and perform for the community before heading to Nebraska.
The JHS Thespians performed “The Shape of the Grave” in front of judges Feb. 1 at the Montana State Thespian Festival in Missoula and were chosen as the chapter select of Montana to perform at the international festival.
Mike Hesford, director of the JHS Thespians, said that the group went to the international festival a couple of years ago to watch other plays and attend workshops, but this will be its first time performing there. He said that the group needs to raise $40,000 to attend, and is about two-thirds of the way there with four weeks left to go.
“Our goal is to compete in this festival every year or two years from this point on,” JHS Theatre Assistant Ellie Youde said.
Youde, a JHS Alum, was in the JHS Thespians for her three and a half years before she graduated last year. She decided to take a gap year and was working nearby when Hesford asked her to be his assistant. The position did not exist before Youde. She helped Hesford with the five shows the Thespians have performed this year one more than normal — directed the March production of “Rumors,” and plays the leading role in “The Neighbors.”
“The Shape of the Grave” is set in 1970s Northern Ireland during “The Troubles”: the conflict where the Irish Republican Army fought for independence from British rule. The play centers around a 16-year-old girl named Colleen, who lost her mother, father and brother to the fight. Her father was in the IRA, and she wants to be just like him. But her older sister, Brigid, the only other surviving member of her immediate family, wants to stop her from ending up like their dad, who accidentally blew himself up making a bomb.
“The Shape of the Grave” is a good play for the group, senior Dakota Zufelt said, because it challenges them as actors to play roles unfamiliar to them or outside their comfort zone. Zufelt is the director for the show, and won Outstanding Student Director of a Drama at the Montana State Thespian Festival. He also plays “the finder.”
Sophomore Emme Rosenbaum, who plays Colleen, won Outstanding Actress in a Drama at the state festival. She’s acted in plays before, but this is her first time in a leading role. She said that when she first heard the play was going to the international festival, she was shocked more than anything. “It took until we were on the bus ride back home for it to really sink in,” she said.
In addition to Zufelt and Rosenbaum’s awards, the JHS Thespians won Outstanding Drama, Outstanding Costumes in a Drama and JHS Senior Josie Marks won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama for her role as an IRA member in “The Shape of the Grave.” Marks is also playing Inez’s grandmother in “The Neighbors.”
For “The Shape of the Grave,” the entire cast had to learn how to speak with an Irish accent. At the time, Hesford was acting in a play in Bozeman where he, too, had to have an Irish accent, so the cast was able to learn alongside him. To prepare, the students watched YouTube videos, Irish movies and Irish documentaries featuring North Irish accents. According to several students in the show, speaking in the accent got easier the more they practiced, although it seemed almost impossible at first.
Senior Abby Rosenbaum, Emme Rosenbaum’s older sister, plays Colleen’s older sister Brigid in the play. Being sisters in real life helped them be sisters on stage, they said, because they “already have that connection” and can practice lines together at home. Abby Rosenbaum said it’s been nice to do the play with her younger sister because they can bond over it outside of rehearsal. “We talk to each other in Irish accents at home all the time now,” she said.
Hesford chose “The Neighbors” as a prelude to “The Shape of the Grave” for the Butte performance because it is a light, happy comedy that he hopes will offset the heavy seriousness of the latter production.
“The Neighbors” is a period piece set in the early 1900s about Irish immigrants in America and has a message of love, community and family. It centers around three generations of women living in America — Inez, a first generation American, her mother and grandmother, and the neighbors they create a community with. In the play, Inez falls in love with a neighbor boy named Peter, and she, her mother and some of the other neighbors discover that one of their neighbors, childless widow Mrs. Ellsworth, is adopting her newly motherless nephew, and rally around her to throw her a party to welcome the new boy.
The group did not perform “The Neighbors” at the state festival and will not perform it in Lincoln.
The Thespians are excited to bring both “The Shape of the Grave” and “The Neighbors” to Butte because of the strong Irish community there.
Both plays are 30 to 45 minutes long. The show in Butte will be on June 8 at 7 p.m. at the Motherlode Theatre. Tickets are on sale for $10.
The International Thespian Festival is at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln from June 23 to July 1. The JHS Thespians will perform “The Shape of the Grave” on June 28. On other days they will attend workshops and watch performances from other theatre troupes.
