As the lights dim, Batman and Robin flash across the screen to fight off villains in this week’s serial show. Cliffhanger serials like this graced the silver screen before many films in the 1940s, and now, they are being revived on the WSHS stage. As the school’s second serial show, the cast has decided to place a spin on the new storyline.
The White Station drama department has previously performed theater teacher Brandon Lawrence’s very own play “Cliffhanger: Beware the Blue Ghost” in the fall of 2019. The play is filled with different perils that the main character, the Blue Ghost, must conquer. These quest based plots are based off of the serial shows that Lawrence loves so much. Now, he has brought back the beloved Blue Ghost for a sequel show.
“The show had been produced several times, and each time, the cast had a real affinity for it, really took to the characters and they were always asking ‘what happens next?’,” Lawrence said. “Of course when I wrote the first one, I had no intention of really doing a sequel but interest was there… I started writing it and I had nothing more in mind than this time they’ll be martians.”
Though many attributes of this show are similar to the prequel, the largest difference is the execution. The play has been turned into an amature film and will be released on YouTube. Lawrence decided to film this production rather than have a live production at the school due to COVID-19. Since the serial show is now a film, the actors plan out their scenes in an entirely different fashion.
“For this show in particular, we have hit a lot of bumps in the road with kids getting COVID, then not being able to come to rehearsals, and people needing to stage [scenes] so it has gone on a lot longer than it usually does,” stage manager Abby Israel (12) said. “With the actual play, we would do full run throughs, but I actually have not seen the play go all the way through because we just do a scene a day.”
Despite all these bumps, the cast manages to enjoy the process and dive into the story. The actors have taken time to study the exciting plot of old cliffhanger films to fully immerse themselves in the process. There is still a sense of family and friendship according to Blake Shirley (12).
“It’s a process we have never been through before,” Shriley said. “At first it was [an atmosphere of] confusion but then it settled into excitement, this is something new, something fresh… When you have got new people coming in, you have to let them warm up to the family. Over time you can just come in, say hey and everyone is comfortable with each other.”
According to the cast and crew, this new venture has had ups and downs with scheduling, but the outcome will be worth the work. The seniors are especially excited to leave their drama careers at WSHS with a cliffhanger, but they still want the actors after them to return to normalcy.
“It has been really cool doing something different but I hope that next year, they will be able to do normal plays again because it is definitely a lot harder to try and put together something like this,” Israel said. “I definitely miss doing plays, musicals and stuff like that.”