A theatrical reading of the melodrama “Double Trouble on the Prairie” landed all six competing members of the Haines Glacier Bards in the finals at the team’s first home meet in four years.
Three members of the high school Debate, Drama and Forensics (DDF) team also got top finishes in other events at the Nov. 11-12 meet. Colin Aldassy placed third in the “humorous interpretation” contest with an original performance of “I won a giant inflatable banana at the State Fair…Now what?”
“It was basically the hijinx of one guy who gets jealous by this grandma who has a giant inflatable pickle and so he essentially has to one up her by getting a giant inflatable banana,” Aldassy said. The guy gets the banana, “but then he realizes the banana’s not for him, and he has to give it away.”
Coach Hannah Boachart called the performance “very unhinged” and “very entertaining.”
“He does a great job with it,” she said.
Aldassy and Selby Long came in first place in Improvised Duet Acting, where performers draw a random location, situation and occupations and have 30 minutes to conjure up a seven-minute scene. Aldassy and Long did one scene involving a 300-year-old person and Santa Claus. Another involved a potato fanatic and a James Bond impostor stuck in an elevator together, Long said.
“We did three different rounds, and we did really well. We placed first in all our rooms, and we placed first overall. And we had never tried it before, alone or together,” Long said. This meet was the first time the team had competed in the duet improv event.
A speech about the intelligence of octopuses – and the hubris of humans to think they’re the only intelligent life on Earth – earned Willa Stuart fourth place in Original Oratory. “Most of it is just interesting facts about octopus,” Stuart said, adding that she converted a planned informative speech into a persuasive one at the last minute.
Debate partners Sal Chapell and Willa Stuart won five out of six debates but missed the finals by a few points, Bochart said. It was their second time debating together.
All the Bards who competed over the weekend – including Chapell, Stuart, Aldassy, Long, Jade Oaks and Maddox Rogers – came in second for their joint Readers’ Theater performance.
“Haines did really well at this tournament. I didn’t get to interact with them much because I was running the thing. So they were kind of looking after themselves. And they did extremely well,” Bochart said.
The Bards have two more regional meets before a state tournament in Anchorage in February. There’s one in Ketchikan in December, then in Juneau in January. Haines and Skagway switch off hosting a meet every year. There hadn’t been a local meet since 2018 due to the pandemic and scheduling issues, Bochart said.
“We’re at the time of the season where the kids have gotten their footing,” she said. “From here on out we get the very fun process of fine-tuning everything.”