On Oct. 24, the Rock Ridge Performing Arts (RRPA) Dual Enrollment theatre class premiered their one-act performance of “And.” The show ran for 35 minutes, and consisted of two casts: the Red and Grey Cast. The Grey Cast was student-directed by senior Hayley Sutton and the Red Cast was directed by theatre director Anthony Cimino-Johnson. “At first, it was really scary because I didn’t really know what I was doing, but with [theatre director] CJ’s help and by learning from my cast and their abilities really helped me put on a great show, and it was really fun,” Sutton said. 

RRPA took “And” to compete at the Virginia High School League on Saturday, Nov. 4 and became District Champions. “I was definitely speechless at first,” sophomore Laura Adams said. “I was like ‘We just won!’ We first performed it at school a couple weeks ago, and what we performed at school was completely different [from] what we performed at the competition. The competition show was so much better, so there was so much improvement between [the two performances].”

“And” details the complexities of Aaron’s (sophomore Ryan Hart, Red Cast) mind as he grapples with the fact that billions of people deal with their own problems — both big and small — at the same time. A girl’s boyfriend is a noisy kisser, a student got rejected from every college he applied to, and a boy’s father has cancer. As Aaron listens, he tries to tell the story of what exactly happened the night he played video games in the basement while his sister was right across the room. 

Dealing with sensitive topics like sexual assault, “And” displays the fragility and simultaneous vastness of life, highlighting the true scale of every person’s problems in comparison with others.’ Conversely, it took a lot of work to convey all emotions appropriately. It was many students’ first time acting, and they had a few challenges to work through in order to execute a well-performed show. “With our monologues, it took time to memorize them; everybody has their own techniques, but Hayley and Mr. CJ taught us some of theirs,” senior Jagadeepram Maddipatla said. “I learned to trust [my] gut. When you’re on the stage, it’s really important to listen to when other people are coming on and when they’re not for staging, blocking, and cues. If you don’t listen to your gut, you miss some of those important [moments].”

The Red Cast will go on to compete at Super Regionals on Nov. 18 at Woodgrove.

Gallery • 8 Photos

Ananya Karthik

Adrian (sophomore Abby Matson) tries to comfort Aaron (sophomore Ryan Hart) as she tells her story about what happened that night in the basement. “The ending was really emotionally draining; a lot of time and effort went into that,” she said. “You really have to feel empathy for Adrian and step into her shoes.”