The Creative Canvas: The Story of Student One Acts

By Ella Chan

It’s that time of the year! Drama brings one final act to the school year and leaves their message on the stage. 

One-acts are short student-made performances put on by the different drama periods for a grade for finals. It’s also a way for the students to showcase their work in the Rotary Theater. Each class period has a specific theme for the students to adapt a scene to. Much time is taken on the one-acts from writing the scenes, to blocking, to memorization. 

This year the one-acts were moved up by 2 weeks, but that doesn’t kill the spirits of any of the performers!

Drama 1 student, Ariana Esteban, ‘27, will be performing her one act with her group on this date. Her fellow peer wrote the script for their act, titled Swat Grandma in which Esteban will be playing the grandma character Estelle. Although there may not be any relation between Esteban and her role as a grandma, she does add, “Listen. All I’m saying, she likes hard candy. Hard candy is pretty alright in my books!”

Although the one acts are made to be short scenes, there’s still work to be done. Esteban says she works on, “memorization, a lot of performing in class,” to prepare for their production. Most, if not all, the drama classes time is going towards practicing and rehearsing their one-act performances for this week. 

She searches for ways to make the character her own with accents and adding personal flourishes. 

Taking tips from other cast members helped fellow Drama 1 student, Justin Estrada, ‘27, with preparing for his performance and developing the characters he plays. “I incorporate their character with mine to make it better,” he says. In the scenes that Estrada partakes in, he performs as a drunk dad and a robber. 

Estrada takes previous scenes as inspiration for his roles, to make them more realistic and his own.

Despite being fairly confident with his roles, Estrada received the script of his second scene a week and a half before their performance. “So, I guess the challenge was that I really had to study my lines extra hard just to get them down before the one-acts start.” He says. 

Like many other fellow students, Estrada wants to make sure that he and his group do great and do not mess up. 

Even though the one acts are student-made, the Drama 1 and 2 students still need some guidance. 

Arlen Rose T.A.’s for Drama 1 6th period. 

Rose says, “I’ve been pulling costumes, getting props for everybody, and just coach them [Drama 1] along seeing how well they can grow.” Rose finds that the class is doing very well with growing into their characters as the performances come up. 

“Good job for memorizing!” Rose would say to his group.

Melina Carillo, ‘25, is a fellow T.A. for Drama 2, 5th period. Carillo helped with directing Drama 2’s one-acts and their secondaries.

“I’m really excited because everyone just keeps improving day as day goes on, so they’re getting less and less notes. Just, I can’t wait to see them perform because it means so much seeing all the work that went into it and knowing how well they’re doing.”

Melina Carillo

Something Carillo would want her group to know is, “They’re doing amazing and to continue just being loud and being themselves!”

To end off the year, Liliana Gonzales, ‘24, takes her final bow with the one-acts. Gonzales is a part of the Drama 3/4 class and a stage manager. She is featured in 3 scenes for her one-act performance. 

For Gonzales’s last year in drama, she looks forward to receiving her award at the end of the year. As a 4-year drama student, she’s eager to take her final bow and receive her award.

Just like Esteban and Estrada, Gonzales prepares for her character in class. Working on things such as memorization and preparing in class. Gonzales describes the preparation for the one acts as similar to any other Redwood production. The classes have to go through an audition process and look through the different scripts.

“The more struggle was just getting memorized. But since I’m not in a lot of scenes, I don’t have that much to memorize.” She found there was still a lot of information to take in during a short time. 

In one of her scenes, she plays the role of Sleeping Beauty. “I connect more with my Sleeping Beauty role, it’s one of the scenes I’m in. So Sleeping Beauty… she sleeps, I sleep a lot. I’m really big on sleep! So I relate to her not wanting to wake up all the time.” Gonzales laughs. 

Regardless of her connection with her role, Gonzales still takes the time to take notes from her directors and put her own twist on it. 

Gonzales hopes that she and her group have their acts planned out and to have a great show. She says this year’s one-acts are considerably different compared to last year regarding the theme, so she hopes that her act can bring across the same tone and message in their performance.

Tags: Art & Entertaiment, drama, Mrs. Galvan, one acts, performing arts, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, redwood rangers, theater, visalia ca