A play within plays, 1940s style, at FHS
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Arjan Bakshi portrays Ronald Adams, and the actor portraying Adams, in the 40s’ FHS radio play “The Hitch-Hiker.” - Tammy Cheek
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Cast members in Farragut High School’s spring play, featuring “Sorry Wrong Number” and “The Hitch-Hiker,” include, from left, Arjan Bakshi, Mason Thurnauer, Leo Bannow, Ela Pulsky, Pierce Torano and Livi Holley. - Tammy Cheek
Farragut High School’s theater students are transporting their audience back to the 1940s with a play within plays as it presents a version of a 1940s radio drama for its spring ensemble production of “Dial M for Murder” and “The Hitch-Hiker.”
The play is being performed beginning at 7 p.m., Friday, April 9, and Saturday, April 10, in FHS’s Ferguson Theater.
Lea McMahan, FHS theater and film teacher, said, “We’re doing an ensemble piece, a spoof on a 1940s radio show.
“The students have written part of it, and then the scripted part is (1943) ‘Sorry Wrong Number” and the (1946) ‘Hitch-Hiker,’” she added. ‘These are scripts from old 1940 radio programs (by playwright Lucille Fletcher). We are using those, but we are also doing, like a play within plays.
“The students have come up with their own characters, who are the actors who are doing the radio show.”
“I feel really good about it,” said Ela Pulsky, whose roles are Ruth, Agnes and Miss Whitney. “I’m excited for it, and I like the theme a lot, too. I really just like the 1940s vibe and I really like the scripts we’re doing — especially the first one.”
Six of her students — Arjan Bakshi, Mason Thurnauer, Leo Bannow, Pulsky, Pierce Torano and Livi Holley — make up the cast, joined by McMahan, who also has a part, and one student, Cecilia Lovelace, who makes up the crew. “I think the time period is extremely interesting to play, just because of being around wartime,” Thurnauer said. “I also love being able to do sound by hand instead of doing sound cues, like we’re used to using,” he said. ”I think that really adds a lot.”
Pulsky, who will be portraying the wife in “Sorry, Wrong Number,” said, “That’s challenging. No. 1, I’m every other line, and most of my (lines) are really long monologues. ...”
Portraying Ronald Adams, the driver, in “The Hitch-Hiker,” Bakshi said he enjoys playing his part.
“I really get to go crazy with it, really extend the acting in a way, because (the character) is losing his mind,” he added.
“I just think it’s so cool that …. even when we’re ‘in character’ for the radio plays, we’re still also in character for the overall play,” said Bannow, who will portray the hitchhiker whom Adams tries to avoid.
Holley will be playing Margaret, the radio station owner’s daughter, as well as Adams’s mother. “I think it’s really fun to play her daughter … I have to be standoffish toward her and rude and stuff,” she said.
“I think the style that we’re putting on is really interesting, in the fact that we’re playing in character, in character, in character,” said Torano, who will play a female hitchhiker in “The Hitch-Hiker,” as well as the man in black and George, the paid assassin, in “Sorry, Wrong Number.”
Tickets are $8 per person but $5 each for students, and can be purchased from the students.
However, audience number is limited to “about 25 to 30,” McMahan said.
“The kids are going to get a certain amount of tickets each so relatives can come and see it,” she added.
