Drama Club To Present ‘La Mancha’

The Newtown High School Drama Club is at it again. In the upcoming months the drama club that presented such memorable productions as The Music Man and Guys & Dolls will be presenting their latest endeavor, Man of La Mancha. The young thespians have already started work on La Mancha, which will not be open to the public until March 22.

The production will involve roughly 100 students and supervisors at the time of its completion. For the time being, rehearsals and meetings dot the calendar. The advertising crew is busy spreading the news about this fantastic production and the construction crew is building away. The student-run high school television station, channel 17 NTV, will be running a series of shows about all the work done in preparation for La Mancha. There are a great many crews needed to put on a production like this one. Everything from costumes and props to programs and house need to be hammered out before the show comes together. Every student involved has an important job to do and many spend hours hard at work. This work is made possible by producer Cherie Swetts, who practically lives at the high school as she works there during the day in addition to running the drama club production staff.

The students are getting history as well as acting lessons from Musical and Stage Director Ann McNulty Ferraro. La Mancha is also a complex show with three intermixed plots and a cast of multiple personalities. Each actor must play at least two different characters as they are taken through an imaginary world of excitement and intrigue, all while locked in a Spanish prison. Also locked in prison is Miguel de Cervantes, author of the classic novel, Don Quixote. He proposes that the prisoners put on a play based on his novel. Cervantes plays the role of Don Quijana, the disillusioned man who imagines that he is the great knight, Don Quixote. The other prisoners join in the acting out of the book and they too take on another persona. As the story unfolds, the audience and the actors are taken deeper into the delusions of Cervantes as the quest for the “Impossible Dream.”

Man of La Mancha promises to be a spectacular production with a set designed by Newtown local Andy Knapp and choreography by Jennifer Turey, owner of Dance Etc, and Edgard Gallardo. Mr Gallardo was in the cast of the Man of La Mancha national tour.

Show dates are March 22 at 7:30 pm, March 23 at 8 pm, and March 24 at 2 and 8 pm. Tickets will be available in the Newtown High School Main Office beginning March 12. Any questions or further information please call 270-6150, ext PLAY (7529).