The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Kaiser High School theater students win awards for two plays
Fontana’s Kaiser High School Artistic and Theatrical Society won many accolades for their fall repertory performances, earning a main stage invitation to the California Educational Theatre Association’s 2022-23 High School Theater Festival.
In the fall, the students staged two plays on alternate nights. The California Educational Theatre Association judges selected both plays for the Jan. 13-15 festival held at Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, where students performed scenes from each play.
The Kaiser students’ production of “Mojada, a Medea in Los Angeles” received a second-place finish and a spot on the festival’s main stage. The second play, “Lazarus Rising,” received a ninth-place finish and a place on the festival’s second stage.
“I want my students to be completely prepared for all aspects of theater, so we decided to go with a repertory company, where students act in one play and work as crew members on the other,” Kaiser drama teacher Wendi Johnson said in a news release.
“It’s very challenging but our kids were up to it. They knocked it out of the park. For both plays to be chosen by CETA is an amazing honor. I am so proud of our KATS,” Johnson said.
“Mojada,” written by Los Angeles-based playwright Luis Alfaro, is a modern-day reworking of Euripides’ “Medea,” combining Greek tragedy with Mexican folklore. Taking place in Boyle Heights, “Mojada” follows border crossers through a tale of immigration, assimilation and gentrification.
“If I didn’t know better, I would think that I was viewing a play at the Mark Taper Forum,” one of the judges wrote, according to the news release.
“I can honestly say I don’t remember being as impressed at any other high school performance. The ensemble acting of this young group of actors was tremendous. They all inhabited the characters they were living perfectly,” the judge wrote.
The subject matter of “Mojada” resonated with the students, many of whom shared their own stories about immigration and culture that informed the production, according to the news release.
The six-person cast included a student from Fontana’s Southridge Tech Middle School.
“It’s an amazing feeling to tell a story so closely connected with my culture,” Kaiser senior Luis Ramirez said in the news release.
“Lazarus Rising” is a zombie thriller in which a group of small-town citizens taking refuge in a shelter has to come to terms with its prejudices while the group waits out a zombie attack.
This year’s Kaiser High School theater students are building on the school’s reputation for theatrical performances. In 2022, two Kaiser seniors were recognized as superior monologists at the California Educational Theatre Association’s Thespian Festival and advanced to a national competition.
In 2021, the Kaiser staging of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” was awarded third place in the California Educational Theatre Association High School Theater Festival, according to the news release.