The Integrated Drama class performed four short plays on Thursday, October 25 to a room full of family members and students. As students prepared for their show, a nervous, yet excited energy floated around the room. People were helping each other rehearse lines and greeting parents and friends as they arrived to watch.

However, this show began taking form earlier in the semester, as a small group of students in the class brainstormed ideas. Everyone had different interests and ideas, but they all decided to use Harry Potter as inspiration. After watching the movie and being put into four separate groups, students got to chose elements of the plot they liked as well as characters to create their plays. Troy Derossi said, “We did the performance with just the class, we practiced several times before and it worked out well.” Students found many ways to be creative, from deciding what their play would be about to coming up with props. Everyday items such as sticks for wands and a mini football for the Sorcerer’s Stone were used, along with a little imagination, to make their plays come to life.

The first play, titled “Harry Finds the Stone”, showed Harry’s journey as he tried to gain the Sorcerer’s Stone. Subtle details, such as singing the Mii Channel music theme to put the three headed dog to sleep, caused the whole audience to laugh. Their play included a twist ending, where instead of fighting the evil wizard to gain the stone, it was thrown at Harry. Sylvia Morales summarized her play by saying, “Harry saved the stone, and the mean guy, Ryan, threw it at him.”

“Adventures of the Trio” began as Harry bought the entire food cart on the Hogwarts Express for three dollars. This play showed Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they interrogated Hagrid for information and decided to go save the stone. This play would not have been complete without sound effects, for everything from the train stopping to casting spells. After performing as a three-headed dog, Derossi said “we did it and it felt pretty good. I feel like I might want to do it again sometime.”

Unlike the first two plays, the second two took inspiration from wizards and some of the main characters to create a different story. “Voldemort’s Evil Plan” was set in a more modern time, with a young Voldemort whose phone was taken away by his parents. Out of anger, Voldemort turned his dad into Bigfoot using magic. He also built a time machine with his three-headed pet dog to go back to the world of Rick and Morty. After some arguments and battles with the characters in this world, the play ended with “…and so the bad guys won the day.”

The final performance to take the stage was “Hogwarts Murder Mystery,” which happened just as the title implies. Characters at Hogwarts were all brought to one location in the castle before being killed one by one in this plot for revenge. When asked about how her play went, sophomore Hailie Jung simply said, “It was amazing.”

Devyn Ward, a student teacher at Fossil Ridge High School, produced the shows. She was very pleased with how it went, and proud of every student who participated, adding,  “A lot of people had personal goals for themselves, that even included small things like getting up in front of an audience and saying something. They achieved that today.”