It's been a long time coming, but Chantilly High's Theatre Sports Team finally beat Westfield High to capture first place at last Friday's countywide competition. The seven team members all received medals, and Chantilly received a trophy.
TWELVE HIGH schools vied in the event held at Robinson Secondary School, with Westfield coming in second, and Robinson, third. There are three theatre sports competitions a year, and Westfield won the last six times in a row.
Said Chantilly junior Mike Wilbur: "We haven't beat Westfield since 2001, so it felt pretty good." He was part of the team, along with Mike Deveney, Marley Monk, Meredith Lynch, Missy Klein, Jay Liotta and Phil Reid.
"We're thrilled to death," said Chantilly drama director Ed Monk. "It illustrates their teamwork. Theatre sports takes a lot of discipline and timing and stepping back from the spotlight so the team can shine."
The competition consists of particular games or scenarios. The students are given variables and have to instantly create and act out a skit with them, within a certain time period. One of them on Friday was "Death in a Minute."
"You have to have someone die in as close to a minute, as possible," said Wilbur. "The judges gave us 'a hobo' and 'a guinea pig' as our variables, and the audience gave us 'things you shouldn't put in a blender.'"
In their skit, Wilbur was the hobo and Reid was his pet guinea pig. "Meredith, Jay and Marley were walking down the street and heckled us. So I had Phil perform tricks for money; then I put him in a blender and he died. The last line was Jay asking if he could get a glass."
WILBUR SAID it's fun to "just come up with stuff because you never know where you'll end up when you start the scene. All 12 schools participated in the first two rounds of competition. Then the five receiving the highest scores from the judges continued to the next two rounds. The winner's based on the last two rounds only.
"I really liked our very last skit," said Klein, a senior. "It was a game we'd never played before, and we got one of our best scores on it." One person had to recite a poem in gibberish and the other team members had to interpret it. The variables were Santa and Amish country.
"I hit the ground like bongo drums and recited a poem in gibberish," she said. "Then the two Mikes, Jay and Phil stood behind me, discussed the interpretations and made hilarious comments. What culminated it — and what we got a special award for at the end, for the funniest moment recalled by the judges about our team, was when we did the Fanta dance. The other actors said, 'Santa, manta, Fanta' and began dancing like the Fanta soft-drink girls on the TV commercial."
Klein loved being in the competition. "You get a rush of adrenaline having to think of everything quickly on your toes and being in an ensemble," she said. "It's difficult incorporating in the variables, but that's what makes it so much fun."
CLASSMATE LIOTTA also likes "being able to work with these other people who are hilarious, taking what they say, playing off of it and shooting off rapid-fire ideas." He said doing ensemble skits is "one of the best parts of performing in theater sports."
His favorite scenario was a game including the variables "people you'd find at IHOP" and "actors." Throughout the three-minute skit unfolding at an IHOP restaurant, the referee shouted out different styles of theater — such as Kabuki, interpretive dance or western — and the students had to continue the skit in that style.
"It was an after-show cast party," said Liotta. "Missy was a techie and Marley, Phil, Mike Deveney and Meredith were actors. When it transformed into Kabuki, Mike rose up like a ghost, his face twisted and turned red and he screamed and attacked Phil."