By Ryan Weaver
The Alpine Sun
     For the first time, the Mountain Empire Junior High School Drama Club presented a play with an entirely junior high cast last week. It was a musical comedy called The Pirates of Penzance.
     This play was adapted from the original opera that premiered at the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York in late 1879. When it premiered in London four months later, it was already a huge success in America. One of the authors wrote a letter to his mom at the time in which he said he thought the play would be a great success, "for it is exquisitely funny, and the music is strikingly tuneful and catching."
     "I chose this play because it was free," joked Jarrod Sills, the new music teacher at Mountain Empire and director of the play. "I also chose it because it’s good clean fun, and everyone remains fully clothed." That’s a good thing; this was a Junior High production, after all.
     The stage lights up to reveal a group of discouraged pirates. Apparently, they lose all their battles and are not very good at stealing. Fredrick, played by Graeson Harris-Young, seeks to end this lousy run and start afresh.
"We’ll call him Graeson-Depp," one parent said after the play. Graeson has acted for the Junior Theater in Balboa Park, and said he was not nervous on the stage, although he had never had a singing part before.
     There’s a hitch in Fredrick’s plan to escape, and the pirate ruffians catch up with him to reclaim him as one of their own. As it turns out, Fredrick was supposed to remain a pirate until his 21st birthday, not until he was 21 years old. And being born on Feb. 29, it was therefore only on his fifth birthday.
     The pirates fall in love with a bunch of singing maidens who are daughters of Major General Stanley, played by Kenny Parker. Stanley was one of the funniest characters in the play. He stood up to the pirates even though he barely filled out his uniform, and he sang praises to his own glory through a brave little voice.
     Then there was the cowardly Sergeant of Police, played by Josh Hutchings. He had a sword so big he had to drag it around on the floor, and when he raised it up the weight of it sent him reeling backward. He was often running or begging for mercy from the pirates, and his sense of duty went only so far.
     The Pirate King was played by Natalie Greene, who had a beard painted on her face and a rough manly voice to go with it. She was a good actress, funny and very convincing. Although after the final bow she came down into the audience and admitted she was nervous up there, you wouldn’t have known it to watch her swagger around bellowing songs and swinging swords.
     “Most of what happened was planned,” Greene said. “But we improvised too. That was the fun part. Especially when somebody forgot their lines.” It was never too obvious, if there was much forgetting of lines going on.
     The junior high actors only had two months to work on the play, from start to finish. It was a good play, especially considering that the singing of so many songs so gracefully is a miracle for people whose voices are changing.

Photo below:
     The cast members of The Pirates of Penzance take their bows. In alphabetical order: Kelsie Bauers, Brandon Chavez, Chenoa Commendador, Kelsey Gilmore, Natalie Green, Stephanie Hodge, Josh Hutchins, Taylor Johnson, Nicole Leon, Maddie Maximo, Elisa Nunez, Laila Oden, Alan Parker, Kenny Parker, Brittany Patterson, Becca Tortora, Jessica White and Graeson Harris-Young.