Ghostly mystery at College Heights
This week, the senior drama department at College Heights secondary school presents Be My Ghost directed by longtime School District 57 teacher Audrey Rowell.
With a new blockbuster film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s classic novel Murder On The Orient Express as indication, the time is perfect to show audiences a dead body and a set of suspects to decipher whom among them is the murderer.
In this case, there may be two murders in the mix. Someone died in the 19th century and the tale is told that the spirit still wanders the rooms of the Black Raven Inn. Is there a ghost? Is the wraith a suspect or a witness in the murder that happens before our eyes in modern times?
Well, it’s not exactly modern times, it’s the 1970s. And it wasn’t exactly before our eyes, we in the audience didn’t quite catch the killer in action. We have to follow along like a game of Clue as the town’s sheriff and the others at the hotel finger-point at one another and spill beans all over the parlour as the truth is revealed, piece by piece.
Rowell – thanks to an ambitious stage-craft student, her mechanically inclined husband Ken, and a committed cast who all pitched in – put a lot of emphasis on the sets and costumes for this production. It’s signs of a surge in popularity at CHSS. The school’s staff are on board and the students are eager to learn the theatrical crafts.
“The program has exploded,” Rowell said. “I now have five drama classes. When I started here (three years ago) there was only one. I think between the band, the art classes and the drama, we have an amazing atmosphere going on here at this school. We want College Heights to definitely stand out in the arts community and we have Randy Halpape, our principal, who supports that.”
“She has completely reworked the drama department and now we have a real program,” said Tanner Paradoski who has grown up around live theatre thanks to his grandmother Sandy Miller. “I’ve always had a passion for acting ever since I was a duck on stage at church when I was 10 or 11, then in elementary school plays. Now I absolutely love it.”
He isn’t aiming at it as a profession, but he knows he will probably always be involved somehow in community theatre or some other amateur capacity. He wants to pursue heavy-duty mechanics as a career.
Colten Delaney came from the other end of the spectrum. He tried drama earlier in high school and the experience was flat, but he gave it another try and he credits the directorship of Rowell for turning him so around on the subject that it’s now a career aspiration.
Both Delaney and Paradoski are in Grade 12 and part of the Be My Ghost cast.
“It releases the emotions,” Delaney said. “I was having a bad day, the other day, but I had to do drama class. By the time it was over, the whole rest of my day was feeling great. It totally transforms you. I don’t know of any other class in school that can do that.”
They both confirm that the peer connections in drama are at a higher level than the core subjects in school. They can feel friendships for life being built and with teens whom they would not normally gravitate to by natural social means.
“You are forced to come out of your shell, forced to break out of yourself and you are forced to commit to a group of other people who are doing the same,” Paradoski said. “You can’t take drama and not be changed as a person by the end.”
Delaney laughed that when they run into each other in the halls in between times, the cast members will often greet each other by their characters’ names, and even in the accents of their respective voices.
All it took to accomplish all this interpersonal growth and communication was a little murder and a bit of supernatural activity in the CHSS drama room.
Be Our Ghost runs today through Friday at 7 p.m. at the school (with two matinees for other schools to attend). Admission is $10 regular, $5 studentsseniors, available at the door.