Drama Club

This spring the B.C. Drama Club has embarked on an interesting and challenging project.  They are presenting a play called Drood, which is based in part on Charles Dickens' unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

Drood is a musical comedy with elements of melodrama (the audience is encouraged to boo and hiss at appropriate moments), but the parts based on Dickens' novel have a more serious theme of the nature of temptation and evil.

The play is challenging to the student actors because each plays two characters simultaneously.  Each is a member of the Music Hall Royale Acting Company and at the same time each of them has a part in the play which the acting company is performing (The Mystery of Edwin Drood.)  Since one is comic and the other is serious, this is particularly challenging to each student actor.  The musical comedy part of the play is the story of a Victorian acting company in the process of staging a play.  Here we see the comic insecurities, egos, and pranks of the cast members and laugh at them.  As they perform their parts, we are also drawn into the serious part of the play as we see John Jasper struggle with his evil desires and temptations and the resulting murder.  One of Jasper's problems is an addiction to opium which was a serious problem in 19th century England.  In the actual novel Dickens presents the evils of opium dens and thier destruction of lives very vividly.  The play touches briefly on that. 

Audience participation continues in the second act of the play as the audience is asked to vote on who the murderer is.  This is necessary because Dickens died before revealing who the murderer was.  It is a challenge for the students because they must rehearse six different endings of the play so that they can accommodate the audience's choice.

Director

Bruce Standley

Music Director

Timothy Houser

Choreographer

Marianne Houser

Cast:

Crew:

Pictures