Big shoes to fill? We won’t even go there as the Rochester Memorial School students prepare for their spring play sans their director, Danni Kleiman, who retired last year after directing the student actors for 31 years. But as the students debut their play “A Stranger in Camelot” on Friday, May 4, the audience will see that it’s a new day for RMS, with a new director who shares Kleiman’s passion for enriching RMS students through drama.
RMS teacher Karen DellaCioppa is no stranger to the RMS stage. She had been assisting Kleiman for years behind the curtain before she took on the position as director of the school’s annual spring performance.
“I’ve been helping Danni for a long, long time,” said DellaCioppa during a dress rehearsal on Monday. And when Kleiman retired last year, the big question on the fate of the spring play was, “Do we let it stop or do we keep it going?”
“I really do believe the students get a lot out if it,” said DellaCioppa. “To let it go would be doing a disservice to them.”
This year’s play is an adaptation of Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, altered to fit the contemporary culture of technology and the ingenuity of the modern tech-centric mind.
“I’m not a Shakespeare expert, so I couldn’t do a Shakespeare play,” said DellaCioppa. Shakespeare was Kleiman’s thing. “But I wanted to present something that the kids wouldn’t know anything about, and I like Mark Twain.”
Hunter Bishop plays Hank Morgan, a 2018 RMS student who’s tech savvy and possesses the spirit of an inventor. During an argument with a fellow student named Hercules, played by Jack Jones, the two fight over how the RMS spring drama should be run and fists start swinging. Hercules knocks Hank unconscious and as the curtain is lifted, Hank finds that he has been transported back in time to 6th century Camelot, smack dab in the middle of King Arthur’s Court.
Hank, whose arrival is mistaken as an attack by a scary dragon, is taken prisoner and sentenced to death by King Arthur. But, luckily for Hank, he paid attention in history class and recalled that a total eclipse of the sun was to occur on that very day. Hank announces he is a magician and unless he is freed he will plunge the land into darkness. Just then the moon covers the sun and Camelot is in a panic. Hank is released on the grounds that he is accepted at court and allowed to go into business alongside the king, and he transforms the medieval kingdom into a modern-day corporation. He is knighted as “Sir Boss,” short for Sir Hank Morgan of Rochester, Massachusetts – a place no one at court had ever heard of.
“This one was fun to do,” DellaCioppa said. And with the school’s extensive collection of Shakespearesque costumes and sets, the transition from Shakespeare to Camelot was a logical one.
There’s also a new element to the play this year – live farm animals.
“In the story, there’s a lot of magic,” said DellaCioppa, and one of the scenes entails a character under a spell who mistakes two pigs for two princesses. “The kids are really excited because we’ve never had real pigs here,” said DellaCioppa.
And just then, before the student actors entered the stage for their rehearsal, out walked Kleiman herself from behind the curtain making some last-minute arrangements of sets and sound equipment.
“She offered to step in behind the stage, basically, so it’s really like a whole role reversal,” said DellaCioppa. “It’s been fun, and I’ve been sort of relying on her expertise.”
Perhaps it’s safe to say that ‘old’ directors never retire, they just go behind the scenes.
The play opens this Friday, May 4, with showtime at 7:00 pm in the Rochester Memorial School cafetorium. Tickets, available at the door, are $10 for adults and $5 for kids.
By Jean Perry
Keep it alive so wonderful for all of Rochester