The Fox High School Theatre Troupe will perform Neil Simon’s comedy “Rumors” this week at Rickman Auditorium, 747 Jeffco Blvd., in Arnold.
Show times will be 7 p.m. today, Oct. 28; 7 p.m. Friday; and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday. Tickets cost $10 for adults and $8 for students and senior citizens and may be purchased at the auditorium or through the Theatre Troupe’s page on the high school’s website, foxhs.fox.k12.mo.us.
Fox High teacher Sam Meyer, who’s directing the show, said his students wanted to put on a comedy.
“They said they are depressed by dramas,” he said.
The two-act play takes place in the late 1980s at the home of Charlie and Myra Brock in the Palisades, just outside New York City. Four couples arrive at the home to celebrate the couple’s 10th anniversary and find Charlie suffering from a gunshot to his earlobe, and his wife is nowhere to be found. The guests begin to make up stories about what may have happened.
Meyer has two 10-person casts – the Charlie cast and the Myra cast, which will take turns performing the show.
“The ‘Charlie’ cast is upperclassmen and more experienced actors. The ‘Myra’ cast is more freshmen, sophomores and people doing a play with us for the first time,” Meyer said. “This way there is a built-in mentorship. They help each other, coach each other and memorize lines together. The actors are not in competition with each other, and there are no understudies. Each cast gets two public performances.”
The “Myra” cast will perform at 7 tonight and 2 p.m. Saturday.
It includes freshmen Kirsten Vilcek, Julius Furlow, Kyler Kramlich and Alayna Mckenzie; sophomores Ariella Baer, Chelsea Keys, Symon Baumhardt and Alexandra Little; and juniors Maddy McCoy and Angel Springers.
The “Charlie” cast will perform at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
The cast includes seniors Alyx Fischer and Isa Rogers; juniors Zoe Simonds, Dominic Deutschmann and Mason Klotz; and sophomores Sarah Monroe, Rachel Rushman, Meagan Stengel and Peyton Kraus.
“The kids have a great sense of humor, and for the most part, they are getting it,” Meyer said of the casts’ performances. “They have been really intuitive in how they need to deliver the lines to sell the joke. It has been fun rehearsing with them.”
Meyer also praised the technical crew, which includes senior Vincent Adams; juniors Dakota Lee-Bosch, Abby Vonderheide, Bella Dixon, Nick Snyder and Samantha Tordilla; sophomores Natalie Lampe, Annabelle Eaton, Aubrey Gilchrist, Jayla Mitchell, Zoey Thomas and Julia Younkins; and freshmen Julia Beiter, Jace Clarke, Vanessa Cossey, Kiera Hunter, Ashling Lynch, Maggie McAllister, Abigail Nunn, Abbs Wilson and Craig Vilchis.
“Rumors” will be the first full-length play the troupe has performed at Rickman Auditorium since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The troupe has produced a series of online-only plays since March 2020, and it performed a one-hour rendition of “Antigone” on May 22 and 23.
“They were so excited, they wanted to jump up and down and scream,” Meyer said of the students’ reaction to putting on a full performance in Rickman. “So many students in theatre troupe are relatively new or have not been in Rickman for two years. They love being in there. Rehearsing in my room is great, but it is not the same as being in that big, beautiful space.”
Meyer said audience members will be required to wear masks throughout the performance and will be spaced out in the 1,400-seat auditorium to allow for 6 feet of separation between families attending the performance. He said actors will wear masks backstage, and all stagehands will wear masks during the production.
On Oct. 20, Meyer said he was still discussing the possibility of the actors performing without masks with the district’s head nurse. He said if actors do not wear masks, they will be positioned at least 6 feet apart for most of the play.
“If they have to perform with their masks on, that is OK,” he said. “We will see what the nurse says and do what is safest.”