At the District 6A UIL One-Act Play competition on Feb. 29, Americas High School students flexed their acting talents, performing an original play by seniors Laura Gandara and Azul Kristal Zaragoza.
Tom Haase, the theater teacher at Americas, said that this was the first time that UIL allowed a play written by high school students to be performed at the competition.
"In the 27 years I've been doing this with the school district, I haven't seen a student-written play get accepted to UIL as an entry into the one-act play contest,” Hasse said. “It's always been established playwrights.”
The play titled “Ending Men's Suffrage” is a satirical comedy about a group of high school girls who trick a high school football player, who confuses the words “suffrage” and “suffering,” into becoming the face of a nationwide social media campaign to end men's right to vote.
Haase encouraged Gandara and Zaragoza to write the play after hearing them joke in class about their high school experiences. The two students took up the challenge and put pen to paper, brainstorming the plot and creating the characters. Many of the jokes were based on things they observed other students doing in school.
“A lot of our friends helped with the writing,” said Zaragoza, president of the school’s theater club. “It was a whole community effort because I would sometimes need help like getting the idea, ‘What does a guy think?’, so I had to talk to a lot of people to do that.”
The students said they did not write the play with the intention of submitting it to UIL. Instead, the play was a way for them to express their thoughts and feelings.
“It was an opportunity for me and Azul (to write the play) as a creative outlet and for us to come up with these wacky storylines and create this whole environment for these characters,” Gandara said. “And it was like the cherry on top when we found out not only could we use this as a creative outlet but also represent our school with it (at UIL).”
The UIL One-Act Play contest is a competition in which Texas schools of similar size present an 18-to-40-minute play, which is evaluated by a panel of three judges or a single judge. The students participating in the contest can perform a play that is on one of UIL's approved lists. If a play is not on the approved lists, students can submit it to UIL for permission to perform it.
After finishing the play, Gandara and Zaragoza seized the opportunity to submit it to UIL for permission to present it at the competition. They were thrilled to learn that the play was approved.
“They're two high school students at an age when everything is artificial intelligence,” said Haase, the play’s director. “They actually did all the work themselves and were creative and finished the story in time.”
Upon hearing the good news, the students got to work preparing for the contest. In addition, to writing the play, Gandara and Zaragoza acted in the show.
They held auditions, learned their lines with the other actors, worked on costumes and blocking, and watched their show come to life on stage. The theater class hosted a preview of the show for Trailblazers on Feb. 22.
"I know that there are a lot of kids who would also like this opportunity, but the fact that our high school, our theater teacher, the theater program, the tech, everybody is so welcoming of me and Azul's ideas and being so open to our play, it's just the biggest blessing," Gandara said.
Zaragoza played Jessica, one of the show's key characters. She was one of three girls who deceived Jason, the football player, into relinquishing his right to vote to ensure that the girls' bathroom at school was renovated instead of the boys' bathroom.
Zaragoza hopes her success as a playwright in high school will help her excel in her future career as a graphic designer.
“I very much like watching ads and seeing how people are influenced by product design and advertisements,” Zaragoza said. “I think this experience is going to influence my career because writing the play, I had to get into the mindset of a lot of different people.”
While writing the play, Gandara said she learned valuable life skills, like teamwork and problem solving, which will help her in her future endeavors. She hopes to attend the University of Texas at Austin and pursue a degree in international business or international relations. In the meantime, Gandara hoped audiences enjoyed the play.
“I wanted to make sure it was a play that everybody could enjoy, like your grandparents and siblings. There’s a character in there for everybody,” Gandara said. “I’m just so excited to see how audiences react to those characters, and hopefully they get their favorite out of it.”