Sardonic of everything spectral interspersed with total curve balls proving to be the facetious underpinnings of the production as a whole, Gravestone Manor is emblematic of the resolve and resignation of the St. Charles High School theater company. The play of Gravestone Manor is a series of vignettes taking place in the confines of a house for a sort of bottle episode experience. What happens inside the manor is nothing short of absurd and fantastical. With werewolf family ties dealing with a meeting of the parents situation and multiple contestant themed game show motifs. The play is narrated by some kind of uproariously snide wraith thing played by Aija Cohen-Davis. It was a breath of fresh air for short interludes for the audience to be briefed about events that occurred either before or after scenes. I was rapt with the character as well as by the eccentric werewolf clan, the embodiment of terror, and ribald infused hellfire conjured up by witches in drag that clinched my admiration towards the assessment of character in regards to the play.

Although I was at first put off by what this play was stylistically as it seemed the wardrobe was unflinchingly glacial throughout the past couple of years as it pertains to actually diversifying the costumes away from the cold war era aesthetic; I was pleased to discover that the direction and blocking made up for any preconceptions I may have had. The coordination of the stage directions were very purposeful given the large scale of the cast that made the stage feel inviting and far more effulgent than nondescript for a play with ghoulish mainstays. In the most pure sense this play was minimalistic given that the exploitation of the scant resources available were used expertly to craft an experience out of something so bare bones with very little effects and scoring. The director of the production, Courtney Gibson disclosed the methods for the execution of the production to ensure that everything remained on course.

“There’s a system. So we get everyone’s conflicts. We get a rehearsal schedule together. The actors know when they have to have their lines memorized by. They come in first and they do a read through and they get their blocking. Then they memorize their lines and we give them further direction from there. And then the tech crew comes in and we do a rehearsal with everybody where we run through all of the cues so that’s all the lighting and sound cues in the show and every time that scenery moves on stage and the stage crew moves everything so that all happens in one five hour rehearsal. And then from there we just practice for the rest of the week running all those transitions until its time to do a show for a live audience,” Gibson said.

With adhering to this system the actors were tasked with unusually unforgiving time constraints and with receiving input from cast about the caliber of the production relative to their own performances and the merits of past productions the outcome was believed to be a positive one.

“I think they have gone pretty good especially considering that we only had three weeks to prepare for this, it just came out of the blue. There were people some of those nights who were going out sick so we didn’t have people in the play so we people who memorized their lines the day of and got out there and did it so I think we did pretty good,” Gavin Goggin, actor and senior of St. Charles High School said. 

There were little to no scruples held clearly as taken from all accounts taken there was a unanimous instinct to fully optimize the time they had as it was quite evident. For the research capacity aspect that went into fleshing out their roles, the territory to which the players were trying to emulate is something most are familiar with but have no real experience. Gavin Goggin who played a witch has had a witchcraft background that proved him to be right for the part. He has, in a very prescient sense, gone through most of his research for playing his character beforehand.

“I grew up with women pretty much my whole life so I have that experience,” Goggin said. 

Goggin, who is a rookie actor, made his debut in Gravestone Manor and went through a directoral swapping and last minute changes to his line “You can suck my blood if you want to”, further complicating things. But indelibly the struggle of time dominated them all.

“A difficulty would be a time constraint because we had 4 weeks and usually we would be doing this in eight weeks but that would be the biggest thing,” Gibson said.

In spite of all of this the cast and crew persevered splendidly and I can only imagine they hope to emulate that for future matinees. As far as the subject matter is concerned for future productions, myself as an audience member would like to see a production that isn’t in any way derivative or antiquated and is something that delves into the exploration of characters and a wealth of different styles and influences. Expressionistic, vaudevillian, the method, and what have you. Some actors have voiced their interest in taking up these forms of acting.

“I’m kind of familiar with some of them. I’m in theater one currently and that’s kind of driving me along but its definitely something I do want to pursue it if that’s another one of your questions,” Andrew Schneider, veteran actor and sophomore at St. Charles High said.