One Act Play

One Act Play Four Baboons students acting on stage

The 2018 SLPHS One-Act Play, Four Baboons Adoring the Sun,  placed second in the Section Preliminary Tournament and will compete in the Section Finals on Thursday, January 31 at Stillwater High School. The top team from each section will move onto the State Tournament at O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at St. Catherine University February 7-8. 

Eros, the god of love, narrates the action of the play in haunting passages akin to the Greek choruses of ancient tragedies. We meet Penny and Philip, newlyweds who have abandoned unhappy marriages to work together on Philip's archeological dig in Sicily. They bring along their nine children, hoping to instill in them a love of antiquity and a zest for the same impassioned living they've re-discovered in middle age. What they aren't willing to discuss with the children, however, is that their marriage originally began as an illicit affair, symbolically identifying with an half-buried statue of four baboons basking contentedly in the sun. The play ends with Penny basking in the Sicilian sun, meditating with the deeper understanding of what the four baboons statue has come to symbolize to her: There they sit, blinded by the very sun they worship, yet drawn again and again, regardless of pain, to its life-giving warmth.

 

Meeting Times and Fees

  • The One Act Play meets mid-November through early-February in the Fine Arts Center, depending on competition advancement 
  • Acting is by audition and stage crew is by sign up
  • There is a $50 activity fee

Advisor

Ryan Julien

rjulie@district16.org