BARRHEAD – Barrhead Composite High School had a student directed play performed on May 23.
Keira Butler has acted in previous Barrhead Composite High School theatre productions and Alyssa Huff has worked as a technician in other performances.
This year when the play choices were discussed in class Butler wanted to do something else and convinced Huff to join her in a two person play titled The Battle of Image versus Girl.
“My class voted for Maul of the Dead, and I didn't click with any of the characters,” said Butler.
“I decided to do a student directed piece.”
Student directed pieces don’t happen very often because of all the work involved in preparing for and delivering a performance.
Mr. Bonnema, the Barrhead Composite High School drama teacher, gave Butler some options and places to look for scripts.
Butler debated on quite a few different plays and chose a play with fewer characters as many of her classmates were happy to be involved in the other production.
She chose The Battle of Image versus Girl really spoke to Butler.
It was important to her to do a play that was meaningful and connected with people.
Butler feels there are a lot of teenagers that go through negative feelings like body dysmorphia, knowing several kids who have this challenge.
She was given the script and were given the assignment to do some short scenes to get ready for the play.
Butler picked her partner, Huff.
They worked on the play and performed it in front of the class.
Huff had never been an actor in previous performances.
The play, about 20 minutes in duration, has a lot of lines to memorize with 82 lines for one role and 83 lines for the other role.
There was a lot of memorizations for both performers on top of determining staging, lighting, sound and sets.
Butler found that they contrasted each other very well.
There were several discussions about who would play each of the roles before settling on Butler playing the girl and Huff playing the Mirror.
Butler explained that the premise for the play is that the girl goes through a lot of emotions and can’t figure out why the image in the mirror hates her so much.
The final scene is where they strayed from the script and did a physical fight scene which was choreographed by both Butler and Huff.
They knew they had to basically kill off the Mirror character.
The whole objective of the play is to highlight going through self-doubt or low self-esteem and it's overcoming and defeating that image of themselves said Butler.
It was important to Butler that they show you must fight for it, and they showed that in an physical way instead of as a metaphorical question.
The performance was attention grabbing, a little bit shocking and a tornado worth of emotions in a very short period of time.
It highlighted exactly what people go through.
Butler wanted to really express those emotions and used different approaches in the speed of her speech, to the emotions she showed and the tone of her voice.
Huff was strong in her confidence and solid attack delivery of her lines, one after another.
Two person plays can be difficult because actors don’t have the usual extra characters to bounce from if they forget a line or forget a cue.
Butler loves to play complex characters. She had acted in Tracks last year and loved the nun character she played.
Acting and directing is very different because all the decisions are made by the student; where to stand, what moves to do as the lines are spoken, and what costumes to wear.
Robyn Dean was their technician, and Butler is very appreciative of the great job Dean did.
Will Butler direct again? She says wait and see.
