HM+Spelling+Bee+Paper

Hillary Morgan November 16, 2010 //The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee// 5 positive things about the production: 1. The set—It was incredibly realistic. They used a minimum amount of props and set pieces to convey the sense that the students were in a high school gymnasium (though they commented on the ceiling of the Fine Arts Theater as a part of the gymnasium as an inside joke). The set was also very versatile in that certain set pieces could be turned around to become something different. The bleachers were turned around and different painted backgrounds were on the back of it as a backdrop for action outside of the gym. The trophy case turned around to reveal Black Jesus at one point. They really made a lot work out of a little. 2. The costumes—The costumes managed to say a lot about the characters. We knew that one of the children was a little league player, another was a huge nerd, one was from a parochial school, one was a bit poor, one was very eclectic and strange, and one was homeschooled all by the types of clothes and accessories that they wore. The mother in India wore a sari and the female judge wore a conservative suit. The costumes were completely appropriate for the characters who wore them. 3. The play incorporated a lot of things from real life, making it seem even more realistic. The vice principal worked for J.K. Rowling High, and the students reference //Inception//, //Dancing With the Stars//, and the Palin family at different points. This kept the play from becoming too stale and distant. 4. The actors were able to play different people. The female judge, who was very good in her role, also played the young girl’s mother in India and seemed completely different. She was also the homeschooled boy’s mother and the young girl with a lisp’s birth mother. The vice principal was also that girl’s father, and he was very different in each role, so there was no overlap. And last but not least, the black guy, a.k.a. the comfort counselor, a.k.a. the lisp girl’s other gay father, a.k.a. the homeschooled boy’s father, a.k.a. Black Jesus, a.k.a. the young girl’s father who was a doctor. As a non-central character he was able to take on several different roles, and he portrayed each one in a different way. 5. My favorite part by far was that there was interaction with the audience. While I was unsure whether or not the people in the audience were aware of it beforehand, a handful of people were called to the stage as “participants” in the spelling bee. As the play was pretty standard and predictable, these stand-in actors were able to go along with the show. One of the participants was even able to spell really difficult words (intended to get her off the stage), making the actual actors have to come up with even more difficult words to eliminate her, which was a bit of unexpected comedy.

5 Negative things about the production 1. The characters, at times, were incredibly annoying. It seemed like they were not very well developed at all, probably because there were so many characters that needed to have back stories in order to be interesting. If they had focused on one or two of the characters as dynamic and allowed the rest of the characters to be static, the play would not have felt so heavy and over-loaded. At the end of two hours, I felt like I had cracked open twenty different books and only read the first page. 2. The storyline was overall interesting, but was incredibly repetitive for the most part. The standard formula of “definition, sentence, spell, repeat” became wearing after about the third time, but they repeated it throughout the entire first half. I felt like if the play had been an hour long and would have edited out a lot of that part, it would have been much more effective. When they finally did get rid of this gimmick, the characters ran around in a circle, alternating between spelling the words super quickly or really slowly. This was not much better, because it, too, lasted entirely too long. 3. The costumes for the characters, while appropriate, were a bit too much. The actors let the costumes speak for what their acting should have done for their characters. They were not anything I would see in real life because they were just so over the top. On top of that, I could clearly see the wig tape for all of the characters who wore wigs, which was distracting and made the costumes and the wigs look amateurish. 4. Though I am sure that they said it at some point, it was unclear how old the contestants were supposed to be. The ages seemed to vary between ten and seventeen, which was unrealistic in terms of the age groups for actual competitions. It was annoying having to try to figure out how these students could possibly be the same age when they acted so incredibly different, and if they did explain this age discrepancy, then they did it only once and very quietly. Plot holes like this kept me from being really absorbed in the story line. 5. Above all else, the most annoying aspect of the play was the acting. The actors seemed to be too much in character and unrealistic. If the play had been a straight out parody of such competitions, then this would have been acceptable, but it seemed like the play was more about analyzing different types of people. The homeschooled kid was too childish, the nerd was too nerdy, and so on, and so on. None of the characterizations really struck a bell, and I found myself wondering why on earth I should be interested in the lives of these characters. In some cases, as with the female judge, the acting felt stilted and wooden—there was no emotional depth.