Arlington High school’s One Act Play team has advanced astoundingly past the zone and district levels of competition with their adaption of The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh. The team has won awards such as All Star Cast, Best Actor, and Honorable Mention in their competition thus far.

The teams successes are explained by theatre director Elizabeth Martin.

“The company have all dedicated themselves to this project entirely and it shows in this year’s project. They have not only been dedicated to the one act play experience, they have kept their grades up and maintained good citizenship. I think one of the reasons the team this year has been really effective is that they really enjoy the play and each other,” Martin said .

Stage Manager Jenna Davis-Jones commented on the overall strengths and weaknesses of the company.

“I think our strengths are in the heart of the show. All of the company is very close and it takes us very far. Our weaknesses are discipline of the entire company and knowing how to have endurance,” Davis-Jones, senior, said .

Although the play was such a success, many great challenges were faced in the making of the magic.

“The biggest challenge is always taking a full length play that a wonderful playwright has written and cut it down to 40 minutes when the actual play is about 2 hours. It is very difficult to cut it down to one third of the play and respect the playwright’s intentions,” Martin said.

Actor Vernon Elmo LaCour IV explained some of the difficulties in acting.

“The most challenging part of acting in this play was replicating  the western Irish dialect,” said LaCour.

As Stage Manager, Jenna Davis-Jones dealt with many of the problems of the production.

“The biggest challenge of being Stage Manager is handling different types of stress and learning how to accommodate for that. When something goes wrong you have to learn to solve problems quickly,” said Davis-Jones.

The Colt asked Martin why she chose The Cripple of Inishmaan particularly.

“The characters.” Martin said.

“The play has wonderful characters and the actors that we have this year are colorful within themselves. We have lots of students with a very sharp sense of humor and enjoy playing comedy, but are also able to handle serious and dramatic humor well.  The Cripple of Inishmaan has both of those things which is why it’s called a dark comedy.”

Apart from the intrigue of difficult personalities, Martin confessed a soft spot for the culture generally.

“I love Irish literature, the Irish are such wonderful story tellers, in fact this will be the fourth Irish play that I’ve done,” Martin said.