Cochrane High School (CHS) will be hosting the One Act Play Festival for Alberta’s Zone 5 schools from April 11 to 13.
The Zone 5 festival will feature seven schools from Rocky View Schools, as well as private and charter schools in the area.
Each participating school will perform several plays both to showcase their students’ talents and to compete for a spot at the provincial festival for one act plays that will take place in Red Deer from May 9 to 11.
Each play must be performed in its entirety in under 60 minutes in order to qualify as a one-act play.
The festival is open to the public and admission is free.
“They can stay for the whole festival or just for one show,” said Dustin Whetton, drama teacher at CHS.
Although some of the performances will be based on already established works, a great deal of the plays have been built from the ground up by a mix of students in grades 9 to 12.
“What you’re going to see is truly just the brilliance of the kids,” said Whetton.
A vast majority of the shows have been written by students and they are responsible for everything from directing to performing to set design and creation.
“We are committed to student autonomy,” said Whetton.
CHS has been working on five one-act plays for the past two months, but they’ll only be performing three at the festival.
Which three they perform will be decided after an adjudicator watches and reviews their performances.
All five plays by the CHS students will be performed at their school in May.
