By Cal Wilson ‘14

Sherwood’s second CAST performance of the year, previously known as Dinner Theatre, underwent new changes such as the deduction of the dinner and a renaming to Winter One Act. This comes from an executive decision from sponsor Andrew Dodge to focus less on the food and more on the student based acting, directing, casting and playwriting.

Previous dinner theatres consisted of a 20×12-foot student built stage in the cafeteria and an accompanying dinner catered by Sol D’ Italia. Dodge provides adult supervision but leaves the building of the stage, writing of the acts, directing of the actors, and acting itself to students to give students experience in running the show on their own.

The new “Winter One Act” production was performed on the Ertzman stage this year instead of on a student-built stage in the cafeteria. On top of that, there was no dinner provided with the show, but were still cookies and refreshments provided at the intermission. The way the production itself is conducted will not change and will continue to include facilitation.

“I decided to move the show to the Ertzman instead of the cafeteria to simplify the production and focus it more on the acting and what the characters are doing on stage,” said Dodge. According to him, the audience attends more to see their family and friends act than for the food so the dinner is unnecessary to the purpose of the production, which is to present a student-run production.

“The hardest thing is always the props,” said senior Chase Fredrick. With a low theatre budget, the students are in charge of building their own props, such as the obstacles in the laser tag arena in Fredrick’s “Of Love and Lazers.” Dodge found it overwhelming for students to worry about building both the stage and their own props so he decided to move it to the Ertzman stage.

The chemistry between the cast members also contributed greatly to the show. Student directors Rachel Fox and Chase Fredrick took their actors laser tagging as a group to bring them closer and give them more passion for their roles.

“It’s the friendship relationship rather than the professional relationship that got things done [during rehearsals]” said senior student director Michael Sanchez.

Due to the heavy snow storms on January 21 and January 22, the dress rehearsal and first show were snowed out and rescheduled for January 23 and 24. The cast also had to deal with winter break, vacations and snow outs when planning their rehearsals. The original auditions were snowed out along with other rehearsals that had to be rescheduled or cut out entirely.

“I would have liked to have more rehearsals,” said junior William McDermott. “I would have liked more time to do blocking.”

Despite the difficultly scheduling rehearsals and the snow, the show ended up being just as funny and successful as ever.

“When we work together it doesn’t seem like anything is going to work out but then it all comes together in the end,” said Sanchez.