At Voorheesville ‘Something a Little Different’



VOORHEESVILLE – Fifteen actors portray quirky characters in a series of five one-act plays presented this weekend by the Voorheesville Dionysians.
"Every script has some sort of twist to it," said Director Steve Madore.

The play plots range from confrontations with a crazy woman at the Laundromat, to having classmates caring for a five-pound sack of flour that is a pretend-baby for a school project.

Madore has been directing for 10 years, but this is his first time directing the Dionysians.
He started out as an actor, and then "had my arm twisted into directing," he told The Enterprise. He realized that his directing "was making me a worse actor, so I decided I wasn’t acting anymore."

Directing the Dionysians came up out of the blue, he said.

The decision to perform one-acts was already made when Madore was hired, he said. It allows more flexibility in the rehearsal schedule because so many students participate in fall athletics, Madore said.

Each of the casts rehearsed about three times a week. Madore’s biggest challenge was sitting down with the list of all the students’ scheduling conflicts to work out rehearsal times, he said.
"Our longest show probably hits a half-hour," Madore said.
Stringing a bunch of shows together, you can’t really go longer than that, he said. All in all, with intermission, he said, it will be a relatively short night of theater. And a short night of theater, he said, "is better than an ‘I-wish-I-was-home-a-half-an-hour-ago theater.’"

One-act plays, Madore said, are an excellent way to teach acting. For kids who don’t have much acting experience, one-acts give them an opportunity to have a larger role, he said.
The casts are small; two of the plays have only two characters. Every show has an actor who is doing something that Madore didn’t envision when casting, he said. "There have been pleasant surprises," he said.
The casts from all five plays total 15 actors, and the majority of the kids have a role in more than one play, he said. The final show of the evening – How Does a Thing Like That Get Started" by Pat Cook – has the largest cast, with 11 actors, Madore said.

The challenges of directing one-act plays are different than directing a full-length play, Madore said.
"I do a lot more multi-tasking," he said. "You never get the chance to get bored."
"Something a Little Different" is challenging for Madore and Portia Hubert – the school’s drama-club advisor, who is handling the publicity for the shows – because they don’t have one name to sell, Madore said.

He equated an evening of one-acts to the first week of a new television series.

We are asking people to come out and see these shows they’ve never heard of, he said.
From the standpoint of the actor, he said, "They get to start with a blank slate" and build a character from the ground up."
"I want an audience," Madore said of his goals for opening weekend.
When the show opens, he said, "I like to sit in the audience and watch the actors have fun."

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"Something a Little Different" will be held on Nov. 10 and 11 at 7:15 p.m. and Nov. 12 at 2:15 p.m. in the Voorheesville Performing Arts Center, at the high school on Route 85A. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $10 for adults and $8 for students and seniors.