For the first time ever, Harrisonburg High School will be hosting a Spring Arts Festival featuring music, art, and of course plays. The four ten minute long drama productions, all of them directed by HHS seniors. One of the students, Dylan Norquest, directs a (controversial) play about a college couple facing an unplanned pregnancy and are torn between aborting the fetus or keeping it. “Unplanned” was written by library secretary Bradley Walton and has two main characters, Mike, played by junior Sam St.Ours and Lisa, played by freshman Isabelle Burden.
“My role is fun and challenging,” Burden said. “I’m playing a college girl who gets knocked up by her boyfriend Mike and later finds out she’s pregnant. Lisa wants to get an abortion, but Mike is against that and threatens to leave her.”
Walton did not mean for the play to support one stance on abortion or the other, and tried to keep it balanced, or politically correct.
“I just wanted to say that it sucks to be in that place. I wrote the play without an agenda in mind, and just tried for it to be a compelling and dramatic ten minute script,” Walton said.
Walton hopes that the student actors do his script justice but doesn’t have certain expectations.
Burden likes working with director Dylan Norquest and actor Sam St.Ours.
“It’s not awkward working with Sam in a play like this,”Burden said. “He’s really good and he’s doing great with his role.”
The play will be performed Friday, April 13 in the auditorium along with three other ten minute shows.
