On December 1st, Barrington Walters and I got the chance to see Laguardia High School’s Drama K One Acts.
Filled to the brim with talent, twenty-or-so senior Drama majors performed in numerous one acts ranging from “The Actors Nightmare” (by Christopher Durang) to “Fabulation or the Re-Education of Undine” (by Lynn Nottage). A familiar EX LOCUM face, Clare Maceda, played Anette in a scene from “God of Carnage”, a fast-paced, rollercoaster of a play that begins with niceties, formalities, and handshakes and ends with Annette crying over her purse and viciously throwing tulips around the room while her husband, Alan (played by John Colapinto) drags her out and another married couple, Veronica and Michael (played by Rebecca Mitzner and Harrison Geller) watch in shock.
As intense as that scene may sound, the others were able to match it, keeping us on the edge of our seats with laughter, anticipation, and sometimes tears.
Before that night, I’d never heard of the play “Fabulation or the Re-Education of Undine”, but I’m not ashamed to say that, after seeing it in the LaGuardia one acts, I ran home and began to look for a copy online to read. The play was overflowing with worldly themes and texts that challenged my moral and philosophical beliefs. The main character was so poignant and somehow relatable – despite her seemingly unrelatable struggles. Undine Barnes-Calles (played by Janelle Clements) goes through the tunnel of misery when she is forced into a divorce, accidentally caught with heroine that isn’t hers, and discovers that she is accidentally pregnant. Janelle portrayed this character so authentically – not only touching the audience’s hearts but also making it clear that she, as an actress, allowed Undine to touch hers.
Clare, a fantastic actress and an even more marvelous human being, has a few words to say about the entire experience and what it was like to be a part of such a knockout show:
Kimberly Campbell, the actress who played Undine’s mother in “Fabulation…”,
says:
These were just two of the five spectacular one acts that were performed on the night of December 1st.
This is not a show that I will be able to forget, even after all the lights turned off and it was time to leave, I sat in the rain waiting for the bus and letting the acts rewind in my head, trying to relive the emotions I felt when the actors and actress were standing on the stage and giving it their all, affecting every single audience member around them.
