ITS Christmas!

On Dec. 4, the International Thespian Society (ITS) and improvisational team Spontaneous Combustion put on a show to share some Christmas cheer with the Pres community. The two groups put on an entertaining night that filled the audience with laughs and warmed their hearts despite the low temperature.

ITS is a club at Pres dedicated to letting those who love theatre be themselves. Members earn points through participating in productions at school. The girls involved in ITS get chances to act in the wide array of shows put on throughout the year or to be technicians, commonly known as techies, who do everything from building sets to manning the spotlights. Members of ITS also get the chance to lend their skills to local theatres to broaden their theatrical talents.

Spontaneous Combustion is a small but dedicated group of Pres girls and Bell guys who compete in the Comedy Sportz high school league. The improvisational team was started in 2007 when Mrs. Garcia-Rodriguez joined the Presentation community. “I felt like the team would be a nice addition to the already outstanding theatre arts department,” says Rodriguez. Although many of the shows done here at Pres consist only of our team, Spontaneous Combustion also travels to other schools to challenge their Comedy Sportz teams. Comedy Sportz involves many fun games in which players must interact with and entertain their audience. As the name “improvisational” implies, everything the team does during games is completely spur-of-the-moment, so the members of Spontaneous Combustion must think quickly and not be afraid to act, well, spontaneously.

“ITS Christmas” began with Leigh High school’s J.C. Molina, sophomore, dressed as an elf and telling Christmas-themed jokes. Junior Tanya Padagonkar performed a series of monologues throughout the show in the form of journal entries. The entries detailed the trials and tribulations of a man trying to survive a rather snowy holiday season. Junior Christine Jones and Bell junior Austin MacPhee then treated the audience to a sweet version of “Baby It’s Cold outside”.

Although she was not in any of the skits this year, ITS Officer Nicki Affonso-McMorrow, senior, enjoys participating in the show in any way she can. “It’s very relaxed,” she said, “but we designed it to really get Pres into the Christmas spirit.” She and the other members of ITS work together to come up with skits that will get their audience laughing. ITS gets ideas for the show from online as well as from the minds of their ever-talented members. In the longest skit of the night, sophomores Emily Griffith and Morgan Locke played reporters who were bored with their jobs. To spice things up, the two decide to improvise the rest of the news. This skit pulled many laughs from the audience and gave them characters they could relate to.

Next up were Kathy Stephan, sophomore, and Bell freshman Chris Brady. They two recited a poem about the difficulties Santa Claus faces in an increasingly politically correct world. Some of his many road blocks included his elves going on strike and the challenge of buying gender neutral gifts. In the end, Santa resolves to give the best gift of all: peace on earth. Bell senior Aaron Griffith wrapped up the night with the song “If You Believe” from the movie The Polar Express. The inspiring tune was the perfect way to send off the audience with loads of holiday spirit

Spontaneous Combustion was up next, opening with a Beatles song and a small dance from each of the members. The group was split into two teams of four for the night, and the extra player, named the “Jokester” had the opportunity to compete in all the games. Team captains Amanda Camillo, sophomore, and Shelby DieBold, senior, helped to pump up their teams and the audience by building human pyramids. “I love the improv team because I get to let out all of my excess energy and be as crazy and random as I want,” said Camillo. “You get to come out of your shell because nobody judges you.”

The group started off with the game “What Are You Doing?”. In this game, a player from one team pantomimes a random action. When the opposing team’s player asks, “What are you doing?” they must say something completely different. The second player must then act out what the first player says, and the game continues on. The referee can knock a player out for many reasons, including hesitation and stuttering. This game is used as a warm-up, so no points were awarded at the end, but this didn’t stop our comedy sportz players from pulling out all the stops and splitting a few sides in the process.

Another crowd favorite was “The Dating Game.” In this game, the Jokester played the part of a dating show host, while three players were the bachelors and bachelorettes, whose personas were picked by the audience, vie for the fifth player’s affections. Team captain DieBold channeled her inner Betty Boop, junior Tanya Padagonkar acted as Tiger Woods, and freshman Isabelle Polito hoped to woo the lucky bachelor as Harry Potter. Bell freshman Chris Brady had the opportunity to ask his teammates four questions each to discover their identities. At the end of the game, the team was awarded one point for every correct guess.

Later in the evening, Camillo’s team played catch up with the game “Slide Show.” In this game, two players are looking at a slide show of their last family vacation. The lights start out dimmed, but when they come up again, the other two players and the Jokester were in creative poses, meant to be a picture. The narrators then faced the challenge of coming up with an explanation for the many imaginative and funny poses presented to them. This game kept the audience on their toes, but they were not the only ones left guessing. Jen Greenfield, senior, was one of players posing. “Improv is so fast paced and it’s all about audience interaction. Each time I play a game I know it’ll turn out differently,” she said. For this game, points are awarded for the number of laughs the players earn from their audience.

For their final game of the night, both teams faced off in the game of “Story.”  In this game, the players make up a story line by line. When the referee points to a player, they must continue where the last left off. This can get quite tricky because the referee can put players on the spot in the middle of sentences, leaving the second player the responsibility of making a grammatically correct sentence. This show’s story highlighted the adventures of a boy who went to the dentist and ended up having a rather odd dream due to sleeping gas. This game truly highlights the team’s ability to think quickly while still being funny. It was a great way to end the night, and after the final tally, Camillo’s team came out on top. DieBold and her crew didn’t seem too beat up about it, though. Like any good comedy sportz player, they knew that they would have the opportunity in the next game to make their crowd combust with laughter.

ITS For Change: Habitat for Humanity

Problem: Nearly 3 million people in the United States alone every night do not have a home. The average age for those that are homeless in the United States is only nine years. 1.3 billion people worldwide live on less than $1.00 every day with no access to clean water, sanitation, or electricity.  A solution: Habitat for Humanity.

On Oct. 1, Presentation’s Community Involvement Club, Amnesty International, Peer Ministry, and the International Thespian Society (ITS) put together a mind-blowing event that will not be forgotten. This year, the annual ITS concert focused on the idea of shelter and gave special focus to Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit housing organization that concentrates on providing affordable housing for deserving impoverished families. Habitat for Humanity was founded in 1976 and has since grown to have operational locations in all 50 states of the United States and in 90 countries worldwide. With the help of incredibly selfless volunteers, over 300,000 houses worldwide have been built and this number increases every day. Their great cause makes it obvious why Habitat for Humanity was this year’s ITS pick for the concert.

Organizers took turns telling audience members the importance of affordable housing. The night started off with a solemn prayer read by Peer Ministry students, explaining that help is always there for those who need it. Amnesty International representatives spoke about the impact that homelessness has worldwide and explained the various causes of it in other countries. Their words further established the idea that no matter what the cause, homelessness is something that all of humanity can commiserate with. CI representatives explained through a beautiful presentation that when volunteers come together to build houses for families, the house becomes more than just a building; it becomes a shelter and home for people in need, which is one of the most important aspects of community work that Habitat for Humanity tries to emphasize.

The concert itself was packed with talented dancers, singers, actors and other performers, all of whom truly communicated to the audience their dedication to the stage and to providing inexpensive shelter for those in need. Jazz choir sang a beautiful Italian song from “The Mission” and the dance team performed with exceptional talent when dancing to Greg Laswell’s “Off I Go,” an emotional song that depicts the feeling of hopelessness experienced by several impoverished people across the globe. Other talented singers from both Presentation and Bellarmine sang mesmerizing songs that truly tied the event together, with voices filled with genuine emotion and dedication.

An obvious amount of effort went into producing this stunning event, with some students going above and beyond what was required for this event. Sophomore Emily Griffith wrote and composed her own song titled “Alone,” a moving song that touched the audience through both the wonderful music and the accompanying vocals provided by the composer herself and by sophomores Mandy Heiser, Morgan Locke, and Demi Pace. Senior Jennifer Greenfield also displayed an exceptional amount of commitment to the event both by creating her own arrangement to the song “Home Sweet Home” by Motley Crue and making a presentation to accompany it with statistics describing the hopelessness of being homeless. Other performers in the concert also showed amazing talent in both singing and acting.

This year’s ITS Concert for Shelter was a truly beautiful event that had talent and dedication bursting out of the seams. The concert truly showed the ever-present hope and determination that is found in each and every person at Presentation. It was an inspirational event that will motivate students to actively participate in volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and other related organizations. So now, let’s fix this problem, because with the help of everyone on campus, Presentation High School is the new solution to homelessness.