Drama 2, an elective class offered by Stroudsburg High School (SHS), has an unusual-but-enjoyable final exam: to put on a play for the rest of the school to watch at the end of the year.
There were two different plays this year for the two different Drama 2 classes, and each class performed their play four times. All of this year’s performances had glowing reviews from the student body.
The first show, which was a “rapsical” (rap musical), took inspiration from Romeo and Juliet during the brainstorming process, incorporating two groups or “gangs” of people.
Grace Carr, ’27, laughingly commented, “It was so so so funny and the plot twists were so crazy. The characters were written very well, and the acting exceeded my expectations. Overall, the best way for me to start my morning.”
“Rap, Romance, and Real Estate” was performed on April 30, and the story essentially features two groups, the Left Side Lyricsists (LSL) and the Right Side Rhymers (RSR), fighting over turf in the form of a rap battle. A few students also acted as townspeople, who wanted to take the property away from both groups.
- The LSL consisted of Gavin Bunn, ’25, Nevan McCabe, ’25, Aidan J. Coyne, ’25, Katelyn Pantinople, ’25, and Ethan Dudsack, ’25.
- The RSR was made up of Julian McEnery, ’25, Jermaine Watts, ’26, Mia Marga, ’25, Melissa Safin, ’25, and John Casey, ’25.
- The Townspeople were played by Tyler Finney, ’25, Abby Grella, ’25, Romeo Santana, ’25, Ethan Meissner, ’25, and Dayana Mayancela, 27.
The climax of the play was no doubt the rap battle scenes, but a few plot twists and characters deserve some praise.
At one point in the show, Coyne, who played “Tobez” for the LSL, abandoned his girlfriend, “Big M,” played by Pantinople, and joined the RSR and showed interest in “Luh Nina,” played by Marga.
The entire scene was carried out with great poise, and the audience fed off their energy on the stage. At the end of one of their performances, Marga revealed, “As Luh Nina, I was scared out of my mind, but the people I got to work with were pretty awesome and we just had fun doing this whole play together.”
Other great scenes that many people claimed to be their favorite were when “Nonchalant Man,” played by Santana, rapped.
His role during the show was to be “nonchalant,” which he carried out to perfection. In his first appearance, he entered from the stairs on the side of the stage and walked in to rap music in the background.
One of his iconic scenes in the show was when he rapped to the beat of “Big Poppa” by The Notorious B.I.G.
Santanta himself advised, “At all times, stay nonchalant. Stay nonchalant, you know what I mean? Whenever something bad is happening – shake your dreads.”
Santana’s character was involved in one final plot twist when a real estate agent’s assistant, played by Mayancela, quit, revealing she was pregnant with “Nonchalant Man’s”child; they walked off the stage hand-in-hand, making their dramatic exit.
Needless to say, the students at SHS were impatiently waiting for the next day to see the second show.
Jennifer Batt, the Drama 2 and English teacher at SHS, revealed to the Mountaineer that the second show was “a completely different type of play.” She thought that while the first one was more of a “silly comedy,” the second show was more “cerebral,” meaning more intellectual.
It indeed did turn out that way.
“Mr. Perfect” was about aliens that learn about the human race through sitcoms, and infiltrate a classroom and take over students, replacing them with different stereotypes, with a special guest star of an alien disguised as LeBron James. There were a lot of smaller details in the second play that many students might have missed the first time watching it, and a few students at SHS even received a shout-out throughout the play (Mannix Smith, ’27, and Alex Ball, ’26).
The stereotypes represented in the classroom were:
- Bullies: Spike (Aiden Serje, ’25)
- Jocks: Ricky (Ben Pilcher, ’25)
- Nerds: Janet (Norah McCabe, ’25) and Wesley (Gillian Stravach, ’25)
- Outcasts: Caus (Rhea Webster, ’25)
- Foreign: Guac (Jayden Inoa, ’25)
- Bimbo: Karen (Sophia Nieves, ’26) and Brittany (Olivia Celano, ’25)
There was also the “perfect” human, Bobby, played by Lucas Pelaez, ’26.
The two separate characters on stage were the teacher, played by Zsani Findley, ’25, and LeBron James, played by Noah Charles, ’25.
The play started out with a voiceover introduction explaining the backstory of how the aliens learn about human behavior: through sitcoms. The kids on stage were doing what high schoolers do before class starts, talking and gossiping, when Findley made her dramatic entrance, yelling about how her husband had cheated on her the previous day and she didn’t want any trouble from them.
As they start taking notes, “Bobby,” Pelaez’s character, goes to the bathroom, and that’s when “LeBron James” pops out of the side of the stage and shouts at the audience that it’s time for the infiltration.
Just like that, everything goes dark and everyone on stage yells and screams, and – BAM! – The lights come back on for the audience to see everyone on stage wearing an alien headpiece.
When Bobby (still human) returns from the bathroom, the students, except the outcast, play three rounds of icebreakers.
This is when someone watching very closely would notice the references to the students being aliens and almost fumbling their covers as humans. At this point, regular sitcom laughing noises were added as background noise every time a joke was made on stage, and the only person on stage who reacted to it was the human, Bobby.
There were some other easy-to-miss details, too. One of the aliens was always writing on a notepad to symbolize the alien race learning how humans (Bobby) acted.
Findley was rude and spoke with a country accent before the infiltration; however, afterward, she turned into the stereotypical nice teacher.
Throughout the duration of the icebreaker scene, the kids, especially the “bimbos,” were gossiping about other students, and towards the end of their discussion, Caus (nonbinary) was approached to join in on the fun, but they refused because they didn’t believe in the educational system and bonding with their peers.
At this point, Noah Charles’ beloved character of “LeBron James” walks in for his debut and has a “Q-and-A” with the students on the stage. All the kids were asking him for advice, but the cool part of this scene was that Charles’ responses were all real quotes from LeBron James that he has said in his interviews.
Charles later commented, “I felt like bringing LeBron on stage was encouraging for me to make it cool and to make his personality more appealing to Stroudsburg.”
His character was a crowd-favorite, and his younger sister, Zoey Charles, ’27, who was an audience member, said, “Many people didn’t understand what was going on because I think they weren’t fully paying attention to the changes that were happening when they turned to aliens, but I think the script and acting was great, and the actors did a great job.”
When one of the students on stage asked LeBron about dropping out of school, he responded with: “I failed over and over, that’s why I succeeded.”
This caused the nerd on stage, Bobby, to start questioning all the hard work he put into school and whether it was all a waste of time: “I’d rather die than fail!”
This is when everyone on stage decided to “help him with that” and – BAM! – Another blackout with even louder screaming occurred, which resulted in Peleaz’s alienization with the headpiece.
Unlike the first day of performances, this play had a “Q-and-A” afterward between the cast and the audience for around five minutes to clear any possible confusion with the script.
Batt later spoke about the brainstorming process behind the very unique script.
She stated, “This group wanted a concept that was not just a surface concept; they wanted something that would get the audience to wonder and think a little bit.”
The class all had to pitch an idea, and someone suggested “an idea about someone whose life became the plays of William Shakespeare, and it sort of drove them crazy, and another person pitched about an alien takeover, and another pitched a breakfast club idea where everyone was a trope.”
In the end, they all combined their ideas and the result was extraordinary.
Pelaez thinks the play came together well since everyone worked well together and had a voice in the process.
Batt also added, “It was a really arduous process to try to get consistency and depth in each of their characters.”
Students were allowed to go watch the plays during their English classes or free periods, and so many students attempted to go twice to immerse themselves in the drama spectacle.
The proud English teacher agreed that the plot could be a little confusing so, “if students get to see it more than once, it’ll clarify things for them so I’m hoping that a lot of students get to see it twice because just like with any good novel, or short story, or movie, sometimes you have to read it or see it twice to really get the whole picture.”
Even though many kids agree that the second play was a little confusing or hard to follow, the majority of the student body agrees that it was carried out with a lot of thought behind it.
The plays were no doubt entertaining to watch, and it is safe to assume that expectations are high for next year, so future Drama kids had better bring their thinking caps!
