When Belmont High Senior Rob Knoll was sitting in his AP Psychology
class he had an idea for a one act play during a discussion of the
“Little Albert” study. In this experiment, a toddler was exposed to a white rat
and was then presented with the deafening sound of a steel bar being struck.
Albert came to develop a fear of the rat, regardless of whether or not a steel
bar was also struck. “The study came under fire for potentially giving the
child severe psychological problems later in life, and opened up the consideration
of ethics in psychology. I thought it would be fun to take those ethical
problems and turn them back on the scientists, creating a sort of reverse
whodunit, a “whoitgonnabedunto,” if you will.” says Knoll. The result is his
play called The Grant. It revolves
around a group of neuroscientists in danger of losing funding for their lab
unless they can secure a specifically damaged brain. When the patient they had
contacted doesn’t show up, the scientists begin to wonder which of them is the
least necessary.
The Grant and four additional Student-Directed
One Act plays will be presented by The Belmont High School Performing Arts
Company on Thursday, April 30,
Friday, May 1, and Saturday May 2 at 7 pm in the Belmont High School Little
Theatre, 221 Concord Avenue.
“The One Act
Plays are a great experience for theater students because it gives them
an opportunity to work on developing their skills in another area of theatre,” says BHS Theater Director Liz Smith. “Some
actors go backstage and work on technical aspects, technical students audition
for an onstage role and all are encouraged to “try something new” and broaden
their skills and expertise. As a result they gain more insight into the overall
theatrical process and an increased sense of respect and admiration for other
participants on and offstage.”
“This year”, she added, “I am very excited to be able to
have a student written piece in the program. Rob wrote The Grant as one of his independent study projects in script
writing.”
In
addition to The Grant, directed
by Jacob Scharfman, the students will present Mirror Mirror, by Bruce Kane, an hysterical combination of several fairy tale stories all
told with a modern twist, directed by Elena Hill & Deana DiSalvio; Next Door, adapted by David Cooperman
from a short story by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a story
about Paul Leonard, a nine-year-old boy left home alone to deal with his
immature big brother and the constant fighting of his next-door neighbors, directed
by Rob Knoll & Myles Tucker; Ugly Duckling by A. A. Milne, the
classic tale of true beauty and true love, directed by Holly Sverdrup &
Corey Whittemore, and Words
Words Words, by David Ives, about three monkeys
who are put together to test the hypothesis: If monkeys randomly hit keys on a
typewriter for an infinite amount of time, will they produce Hamlet?,
directed by Alex Aroyan & Joe Verran.
Ms. Smith calls the Student
Directed One Acts “an important and vital part of the drama program” as it
provides numerous new and exciting theatrical opportunities for students from
the most experienced who are directing to the complete novice who delivers their
very first line onstage. She goes on to explain that for the most experienced
theater students directing takes the student from being limited to one aspect
of a play to having complete responsibility for both the artistic
interpretation and the technical production aspects. The Student Director needs to work not just on the overall concept of
the play but with set design, props, costume lights and sound to combine all
production aspects into a unified whole.
