On Being Earnest at HD

This year’s Hampton-Dumont-CAL fall production combines the stage and screen into one night.

This weekend, the H-D-CAL drama department will present a live performance of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a comedy set in Victorian London.

Prior to the live play will be two recorded Carol Barnett comedy sketches.

Tammy Morris, director, said this year’s format was done to satisfy social distancing guidelines in place by the school and state while giving as many students as possible the chance to act.

Morris said ten or fewer people, including her as the director, were allowed to participate in a live performance. “The Importance of Being Earnest,” she said, has a small enough cast to accommodate the guidelines. The recorded skits also have a limited amount of roles.

While the casts are small, Morris said plenty of roles exist between the three performances for students wanting to act. She said that the amount of students interested eclipsed the amount of roles available for the play and her goal each year is to make sure every student has a role.

“This is a powerful tool for them to speak in front of a group and then employ all of these other pieces that have to fit together,” she said. “I didn’t want those other eight or nine students to not have anything.”

“The Importance of Being Earnest,” she said, is witty and comical in nature, but as is Morris’ goal each year, it brings an element of education for her students. Written in 1895 in Wilde’s unmistakable prose, the script challenges the students’ vocabularies and teaches them about social norms in a different time period.

“The verbiage is definitely older, which I like, because their vocabulary is being increased a good deal and I want them to stick to the script,” she said, “because if you modify it, you’re losing some of the time period.”

She added that students in “The Importance of Being Earnest” were also asked to develop English accents for their roles. Morris said the accents, combined with developing the mannerisms for their characters, challenge the students in multiple ways.

“It is greatly mentally academic,” she said. “They have to intermingle how to put their emotions in and get their bodies to act like their character…it uses both sides of their brains.”

Performances will be Friday, Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m. at Church of the Living Word. The sketches will lead off the event, followed by the live play. Tickets are $5 at the door or free with an activity pass and no presale of tickets will be offered this year. Audiences will be limited to 150 people and masks are required.