Franciscan Sister Elizabeth Ann Miller shares her experience in directing a one act play with the students of Central Catholic High School, West Point, NE.
I offered to assist the high school with coordinating the “One Act” play. I jumped into this with never having worked with high school and not realizing all that is involved in preparing for state competition. 
What this requires is producing a 30 minute play, holding auditions, developing staging, props and costumes. I chose a play that was a parody on the Hunger Games, and worked with a cast and crew of 38 students. The students did a fantastic job and improved with each performance. 
The real challenge was working around volleyball, football and basketball practices and games. We were left with play practices at 6 a.m., 7:30 p.m. or Sunday evenings. These weren’t the best times, but we pulled it off ending up with winning second place at the district level. At the conference level we received superior ratings and half the cast received outstanding actor awards, along with one of the girls getting best supporting actress out of 10 schools. 
Two weeks later we competed for districts with 6 other schools. Again we received superior rating and more than half the cast were awarded outstanding performance, but we were beat out by one point from going to state competition. Not bad for a first attempt at play production. Of course, I did have the help of alum from the school who was much involved in speech and plays when at GACC. Also there was parent help with props and a parishioner helping with costumes.
