The One-Act Play Festival, run by the South Dakota High School Activities Association (SDHSAA), is a three-day event where different schools around South Dakota gather at one of the state’s high schools to perform one-act plays. A one-act play simply means that the performance only has one act; they are commonly thought of as shorter than normal plays or musicals. At the festival, the one-acts are performed, judged, and rated. In all, the celebrates theatre and provides an opportunity for high school student performers.
Unlike years past, due to schools implementing new social distancing regulations, some classes of schools submitted their performances virtually. The remaining schools that participated in person have been broken up by class and assigned to three different high schools—Class AA at Brandon, Class A at Rapid City Central, and Class B at SDSU. Harrisburg (as apart of Class AA) recorded their home performances (February 1st and 2nd) and then submitted one of these to the festival for the judges to judge.
The Harrisburg cast and crew performed the comedy A Play About a Vampire, written and directed by Michael Smith, teacher at HHS. The play follows the story of Lucy, a stage manager at the local community playhouse, and her roommate, Laddie, who is a vampire. Laddie leaves town to go on a long trip across Europe, and—in his absence—Lucy offers up Laddie’s coffin as a set piece for one of the playhouse shows. After it sees usage in the following three shows, the coffin has become a staple item to the playhouse. That means it comes as no surprise that the next show, Dracula, also requires the coffin. However, Laddie returns home early from his blood-sucking tour of Europe to find his coffin missing. Mysterious injuries, blackouts, and other questionable events start to occur in the theatre as Laddie attempts to regain his missing coffin and take the lead role in Dracula for himself.
Similar to most other activities this year, the play performance and rehearsal process altered elements like propping, costuming, blocking, etc. for Covid safety. Although the process changed in many ways, it has been the director’s goal to keep performing as close to normal for the actors as possible. His efforts have not gone unnoticed. The students involved have been grateful for their opportunities to perform and produce shows amid a pandemic. Rylin Yerdon, a senior at HHS, played one of the main roles, Mina. Though this was her last chance to perform at the festival, she says, “I'm thankful that I am being given a chance to perform my senior year—and, in the end, that's what matters the most to me.” Many other students share their regards and looked forward to the chance to perform their show for an audience.
The actors, tech members, and director certainly gave it their all. After submitting their performance, the drama club received praiseworthy feedback and scores from the festival. The plays are given a ranking, the highest a “Superior.” HHS’s play, overall, earned a Superior rating. A special congratulations also go to Harrisburg senior performers Ellysia McElroy and Gabe Delle, who both received Superior acting awards.