The Hanley School Drama Club production Pandora exceeded the expectations of its writer and director this season thanks in large part to the hard work and fantastic performances displayed by the various students who put the play on.
“I like this production the best personally probably because I’d had some opportunity to do it twice before, so it was a lot of fine-tuning,” said Prairie South School Division special education resource teacher Leanne Griffin. She recently served as director of her play Pandora at Provincials earlier this month in Regina after Hanley School won Regionals.
“The first time I did it at Hanley we had younger actors whereas this script I worked with most of them for a couple of years (already). They are still a pretty young group, but they’ve had some experience working with me,” she added. “I painted the set this year. I had a vision of how I wanted that to look, so I was happy how that turned out. And (it was) just a really strong group of kids, so that worked out really well.”
Pandora is the story about twin sisters Becky (Nicola Classen) and Pandora (Hannah Fehr). The title character is disabled and can’t talk or move independently, but through a magical musical ritual can enter a child-like fantasy world inhabited by a chorus (Taylor Seymour, Morgan Lester, Lauren Griffin, Megan Fehr and Lizzy Ettinger) where she can speak and move.
The play concerns Becky who is about to leave school and is faced with the difficult decision of whether she should leave home and her sister knowing that their mother cannot care for Pandora by herself. In essence, it is a play about transitions, hope and despair.
“I’ve enjoyed every time I’ve done it,” said Griffin, noting she first staged the play 16 years ago when she worked at Allan School and then again 12 years ago at Hanley. “I had the benefit of learning from what I’ve done before and adding it to this group’s performance.”
The play had a dream finish at Provincials held May 8 to 10 at the University of Regina Riddell Theatre. Pandora crew stage manger Alana Pauli won the Debbie Baker Cheer Award and Hanley School Drama Club actors Hannah Fehr, Nicola Classen and Taylor Seymour each won a certificate of merit for acting.
Also, Pandora’s lighting crew member Truman Griffin took home a best technical performance award, Alana and assistant stage manager Shelby Millions shared the best stage manager award and the play itself took the runner-up to best visual production award.
Griffin said this is quite the achievement considering Hanley has an extra-curricular drama program where rehearsals and instruction takes place solely outside regular school hours, while the 10 other plays they competed against involve city school productions with hundreds of students studying drama as part of their high school credit programs.
“In a way we’re like an underdog because 100 per cent of what we do is after hours, but that being said I think we have a very tight group,” she said. “We call it the drama family. They are a really tight group of kids and they take a lot of pride and ownership and work extra hard because it is 100 per cent their own time.”