A fairytale story with a gruesome twist and jokes for all ages, Game of Tiaras is the Drama Appreciation Club’s most successful show so far.

Senior Cynthia Valderrama, who played Ellie, the Snow Queen (who, as the show jokes, has no connection to any copyrighted character) described the show as Game of Thrones meets King Lear meets your favorite princesses. She explained the show’s sense of humor with a single scene featuring an argument between her and senior Isabella Oliveira, who played Cinderella.

“There’s a scene where Cinderella and Ellie face off, and they recite lines from King Lear. It’s supposed to be very dramatic because the whole point of the lines is that they’re trying to verbally assault each other,” Valderrama said. “And at one point, Ellie asks ‘What the heck does that mean?’ And I feel like that just perfectly encapsulates Game of Tiaras.”

Another instance of the show’s willingness to break the fourth wall is junior Tyler Brown’s character “Blood Packet Guy”, who spent the entire play throwing red cloths on characters as they died. Brown enjoyed his role but shared the difficulty of pulling off this type of joke.

“A lot of effort was put in to make it look like there’s no effort because it’s all goofy, but a lot of thought and effort has to be put into everything to make it seem just slapped together,” Brown said. “Like the whole thing was like ‘Oh yeah, we didn’t have the budget [for blood]. It probably would have been easier to try to get some sort of fake blood system or no blood at all.”

Another challenge for students like Brown was the timing of the show, with the show’s final two performances on the same day as the December SAT. Although the director, English teacher Mrs. Julie Gardieff, decided to push the matinee from 2 pm to 3 pm, it was still a tight fit.

“It was tiring. Because I got up at like 6:30, drove to Celebration [High School] to take the SAT, I took it in its entirety and then I went to the school and we had like an hour and a half before the actual show,” Brown said. “Which was basically only half an hour of rest, because we have to get in costume and get mic checks.”

Although balancing academics and theater can be stressful, it is something Brown has done before. He has been involved with theater since middle school, having started by working backstage, so “Blood Packet Guy” was a return to his early theater experiences.

However, as this was a large show, many of the younger students were new to the Drama Appreciation Club. One such student is freshman Tanaira Miranda, who played one of the show’s narrators. Despite some prior experience acting, Miranda found playing the narrator initially challenging, but ultimately the perfect role to allow her to improvise on stage.

“I didn’t think [improvising] would be my favorite part because I like structure, but it ended up being my favorite because when you’re with someone else, or you do something that ends up being funny [that] gets a laugh out of the audience,” Miranda said. “It kind of feels like it kind of brings that joy back to me in a sense.”

While some characters allowed for a surprising degree of freedom, playing a character like the Little Mermaid posed very specific challenges. Junior Evangeline Ruiz, who played the murderous mermaid, spent the entire show being pulled across the stage in a cart – but had to perform one of the show’s two songs while still in it.

“I am an alto soprano and I sing from my diaphragm, which is like singing from your lungs. So, being scrunched up in the wagon, my lungs are kind of compressed,” Ruiz explained. “So, you have to switch from diaphragm singing to throat singing which you’re technically not supposed to do.”

Ruiz was pleased that the cart meant she did not have to walk in her costume’s high heels. However, the main benefit of the chart was actually as a way to bring props across the stage quickly. As Ruiz shared, “Oh yeah! Under my legs there were probably like two costumes, a few props and a book or two.”

With their first show of the school year over, the Drama Appreciation Club is aiming even higher for Shrek! The Musical. As this will be their biggest production yet, Valderrama – who will be auditioning for the show – hopes the success of Game of Tiaras will inspire more students to love theater.

“I just think it’s a very fun experience and you don’t even have to speak if you don’t want to, but being involved in the theater process can be so much more than acting or just reciting lines,” Valderrama said. “You can be tech, you can help concessions, you can even volunteer. I really do hope a lot of people join [our Shrek production], I think it’s going to be a blast.”