April 25th, 2025 will be a day that will be very special for the Holy Redeemer Drama Department. It marked the day where history was made as both senior high one-act plays won Best Production at the Zone Drama Festival.
“This feels absolutely surreal,” says Drama Teacher Peter Taylor. “This has never happened before at our Zone Festival for any school. Both of our plays being recognized with the top awards means the world to these students who worked so hard to make their shows the best.”
The two senior high plays that HRH took to Festival were Afterwards and Cuffed. The latter is a hilarious comedy where Jerry (Nolan T), an arrogant legislative assistant in Washington DC, gets handcuffed to a post and ends up getting some much needed comeuppance by a series of strange characters. “When they called our show’s name for Best Production, I couldn’t believe it,” says grade 12 student director Camryn Leslie. “I’m so incredibly proud of these students and their performances. It was a total team effort to pull this off and we are incredibly grateful to the adjudicators for enjoying our play.” Not only did the adjudicators love the play, but it was an easy fan-favourite for the audience getting the most laughs of any of the comedies, plus a much-deserved standing ovation.
On top of the Best Production award, the show also picked up the award for Best Actor to Terris T (for his hilarious Weird Guy character) and Honourable Mention for Prop Flop to Olivia B who after a simple mishap on stage, recovered with some strong improvisation.
“After Cuffed had won Best Production, I was not expecting our show to win as well,” says Afterwards director, Christina B. “We couldn’t believe it! That said, our cast and crew had their best performance as they really hit it on stage. I’m so incredibly proud of all of them.”
Afterwards tells the story of a boy and girl, played by Landon M and Maya D, who find themselves waking up on the side of the road not knowing who they are. Little do they know, they have recently perished in a car crash. The powerful show deals with the idea of who people are, and who they want to be.
On top of the top award, Afterwards also won Best Director to Christina B, Best Visual, Best Sound Design to Dane S, and Honourable Mention for Best Dead Bodies to Bobbi F and Terris T.
When asked why the Festival hands out two Best Production awards, it comes down to numbers. If there are 15 or more plays presented, the Festival can send two plays to provincials. It just so happens that this year both plays come from HRH.
The plays will now travel to Lethbridge to take part in the Alberta High School Drama Festival (provincials). This marks the tenth and eleventh plays from HRH to go to the prestigious Festival.
“We are incredibly proud of the 21 students who took part in these plays and I look forward to seeing what they can do at the highest level of theatre in the province,” says Taylor. “Not to mention, they are going to have an absolute blast at the same time!”
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