NHS To Stage Pygmalion Next Weekend

The Newtown High School Drama Club will perform George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion November 18 through 20 in the NHS auditorium.

The play is directed by NHS seniors Sarah Desrosiers and Autumn Jones.

Pygmalion follows the efforts of phonetics professor Henry Higgins to win a bet that he can transform Eliza Doolittle, a rough-around-the-edges Cockney flower girl, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador’s party by teaching her gentility and to speak proper English. Produced for the first time in New York in 1914, Pygmalion is Shaw's most popular play. It served as the inspiration for the 1956 musical My Fair Lady, which was brought to the big screen in 1964.

Senior Alexandra Aug stars as Eliza, with junior Thomas Primavera as Henry Higgins. The intimate cast of 12 also includes seniors Ishaar Gupta, Nora Murphy and Luke Shearin, juniors Melanie Curtis, Josh Goldman, and Jesse Pasacreta, sophomores Sami Chanko, Kirsten Liniger, and Jeff Haylon, and freshman Katie Wolff.

The set was designed and built by NHS students under the supervision of NHS teacher Tom Swetts and student Technical Director Colby Chilson. The set is also reversed, and will seat audience members on the stage for an intimate experience.Â

Performances in the Newtown High School auditorium begin Friday, November 18, at 7:30 pm, and continue Saturday at 7:30 pm, and Sunday at 2:30 pm. Tickets are $10 and will be available at the door.