By Ken Sury
For six Methodist Children’s Home students and their theater teacher, “The Last Train Out” was a first-time experience.
The students took part in after-school theater with a one-act play written and directed by After School Coordinator Jason Bartlett. Although they started the process in February, but too late to enter the play in academic competition, they performed for their peers, teachers, home parents and staff on April 23 in the fellowship hall on campus.
They practiced and honed the play on Tuesdays and Thursdays after classes, working around students’ track practices and other after-school activities.
Bartlett admitted to being a little nervous when the performance night arrived.
“But once I saw the cast slip into ‘theater mode,’ those nerves started to fade,” he said. “As guests arrived, everyone naturally stepped into their roles. A few greeted people and handed out playbills, some worked concessions, and others helped usher guests to their seats.”
Because the one-act play itself was less than 15 minutes, the cast engaged the audience with an improvisational question-and-answer session and short improv skit prior to the performance.
The plot to “The Last Train Out” centers on six strangers stuck at a train station during a storm, each focusing on their own problems as they worried about getting home.
Johnny portrayed the stubborn station manager giving the strangers little hope that the train would arrive anytime soon. Devan was a parent exhausted from the workday and anxious to get home to the kids.
Krysta played a con artist trying to pull scams on the other stranded strangers, while other students played a romantic meeting the love of her life at the station, a poet focused on working on her poetry, and a teenager with all the headstrong emotion a teenager brings.
Although the characters don’t have names in the play, Krysta said they chose names for their characters to help provide backstory. Krysta, portraying the con artist, chose the name “Conner.”
“You get it?” she asked.
Throughout their wait and a power outage, the characters reflected on their lives and the need to move forward as the play reached resolution.
Because it was the first time Bartlett wrote or directed a one-act play, he utilized some artificial intelligence tools to help create dialogue. He worked with the students to tweak some of the language so it would feel more natural when they spoke.
One advantage of creating a play of their own was not having to purchase an existing script, Bartlett said, which has limitations on changing the story or dialogue.
“After the show, we spent a little time talking about how they felt it went, and every one of them was all smiles,” Bartlett said. “They were genuinely proud of their performance and excited by the audience’s reaction.”
Whether a one-act play returns for next year is uncertain.
“As far as this becoming a foundation to build on, I’m honestly not sure yet since this was my first time doing something like this,” Bartlett said. “But I do think it’s a good starting point.”
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