The drama department worked hard to prepare for their fall play, “Murder By the Book.”

The play took place on November 20, 21, and 22 at the Ritenour High School auditorium.

The process of creating the play was different for each of the members in the cast. They had some positive thoughts, but some were nervous about getting ready to perform.

Senior Hannah Barrow believed that this play was on pace to have a better performance than some in the past.

“We are taking some extra time to work on our act two lines a little bit, but we are definitely more ahead with this play than we have been in the past,” Barrow said.
She said that memorizing lines was one of the hardest parts of getting ready for the live play. This thought was shared by junior Ty Rosemann.

“There are two things that are stressful, and one is probably stuff like lines. And you know, me personally, I have a really hard time with stuff like monologues, having a lot of lines in a row. ” Rosemann said. “And other than that, you know, thinking about having an audience, that can be stressful.”

While the actors play a major role as the faces of the production, the tech crew have more control of the performance behind the scenes.

Junior Lillian Carter is the light board operator for the play. Her role is to operate the light board, which controls all the lighting during the performance.

“I have not actually done it before, but I am excited to and I think it’s going to be a cool experience getting to be in control of the lights,” Carter said. “I will be away from everyone else, and so that might be a little bit hard, like communication wise. But we have headsets and stuff for that, so I will probably be wearing one of those as well.”

Even though Carter spends a lot of time by herself at the light board, she has managed to get close to the whole crew.

“On the tech crew, there are definitely tight knit relationships. Some good, some bad, but we try to handle it as best we can,” Carter said. “I am close with some of the performers, so that’s nice. I am a little bit sad I cannot get to be down there with them, but it is okay.”

Rosemann also mentioned the relationships he has built with other performers and crew members.

“Everybody is closer. Some of us already knew each other, some of us did not, but I think since, especially since the play’s cast is not huge, it really allows us to better our friendship with each other.”

While Rosemann and Carter have time to consider whether they want to continue with drama after high school, Barrow is looking ahead to this performance, as well as future ones.

“I want to do it maybe in the future in, like, a community session, but I don’t think it will ever be a professional thing,” Barrow said.