Mansfield Senior High Drama Club adviser Jonny Price is surrounded by students preparing to begin an improvisational comedy sketch.
The careers of Chevy Chase and Eddie Murphy may have started this way. Or those of Tina Fey and Ellen DeGeneres.
Zany might be the best word to describe the impromptu after-school classroom comedy performance of the Mansfield Senior High Drama Club Monday afternoon.
Adviser Jonny Price watched quietly as six students dug for props in the costume drawers, then huddled to create the plot of the improv sketch that was about to unfold.
“It’s really student-led. I usually let the kids come up with what they want to do,” said Price, a veteran of the theater and a Senior High teacher since 2004.
The club meets on Monday afternoons after their last class. Monday’s cast included juniors Emberly Schaub-Hurt and Destiny Witte; sophomores Olivia Kidd, Gabriel Gurney and Alexis Bell and seventh-grader Aaliyah Kidd.
Their plot: discovering who killed Mother Nature. Bell, a garland of flowers on her head, lay stretched out on the floor, not moving.
Was the killer the butterfly portrayed by Olivia Kidd or the bug played by her younger sister Aaliyah? Perhaps it was Gurney, whose large antenna identified him also as a bug, or Witte, clad in a wig and donkey ears.
Schaub-Hurt, in the role of a bumble bee detective, entered the room and questioned the suspects -- most of whom struggled to suppress their laughter. The banter continued for nearly 20 minutes before Price interjected: “I think we need to come to a resolution.”
It took Schaub-Hurt three guesses before she identified Aaliyah Kidd as the killer. More laughter.
Price, who directed the Bucyrus Little Theatre’s Summer Youth Production of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Musical” in July, said the Drama Club’s goal is to allow students to express themselves.
Gurney agreed.
“Life is boring without drama,” he said.
“It’s about creativity,” added Aaliyah Kidd.
“Weird is wonderful,” offered Schaub-Hurt.
Drama Club is open to all students but Price said there just aren’t the numbers to attempt a stage play.
“It’s hard to find enough kids to do a play. There are too many competing interests and many students have responsibilities at home,” she said.
“We try to do different things. We wrote scripts last year and attended Ashland High School’s production of “Mary Poppins.”
Price noted that Dirk Eachus, vocal music and performing arts director, opens auditions to all students when preparing for the school's spring musical.
Schaub-Hurt and Olivia Kidd were in the cast of “Annie” last year. All six in Drama Club on Monday said they intend to audition for Eachus’ direction of “Little Shop of Horrors” during second semester.
Two years ago Price received the North Central Ohio Creative Teacher Award from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Partners in Education program. She was recognized for developing an arts lesson plan for students, including those with autism, centered on shadow puppetry to present a story.