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FEB.2, 2024— The Pal-Mac Performing Arts Classroom transformed into different worlds Thursday during the first-ever 10 Minute Play Festival.

The festival featured seven short plays presented by a group of High School students in front of a packed crowd of fellow students.

Performers wrote their own plays, complete with stage directions, props list, costume notes, and character descriptions. Oh yeah, they also had to direct their own show!

The first-year festival was a part of a pilot theater program through Finger Lakes Community College (FLCC) The class, Theater 104, examines theatrical time periods from 600B.C. to the present, and everything in between.

Students were under the direction of Theater Director Kimberly Day. Day says they received college credit as a result of taking the course.

“As always, it is my absolute pleasure to work with our students,” Day said. “I am indebted to them for sharing their passion, devotion, and talents.”

The plays were the student’s final exam, and the culmination of nearly five months of work. Students like Gannon said they spent hours writing their pieces, but their experienced backgrounds made that part of the process easier.

Gannon's play involved mobsters with fedoras.

"While I was writing it, my immediate thought was, how many times can I get every single character in this play to go, What?" Gannon said. "Or some sort of plot twist."

“It was cathartic,” said Ryan, one of the performers. “Like it was really nice to just get everything together and then act it out in front of everybody here.”

Ryan joined the class late and did not direct a performance, but he acted in most of them. With only eight students in the class, it was common to see them take on different roles in the plays.

"I think it was really cool for us to be able to show our work to other people than our class that's been seeing it for the last five months," said Ava, a fellow student performer and director.

The plays reflected the in-class learning, as settings and characters ranged from the 1500s to the future. Students like Laney said the process of creating characters and scenes from scratch gave them a new appreciation into what goes into a performance.

Laney, like most of the students in the class, typically perform in the school's musical and other stage productions.

“We're just used to having it already done for us,” said Laney.” So it was very different and new and I really enjoyed actually learning more in-depth about it.”

Students worked with Technical Theater Director Doug Blackall to develop the lighting patterns, and Kasi Krenzer Marshall on the costume designs.

According to Day, the credited portion of the class is complete. Students moved onto another class, Theater 2, which involves reading and analyzing plays.

The class will also assist with the upcoming Spring musical "Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief," which hits the stage in March.

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