The idea for a student-written play came to Owen Parker and I after school one day in May 2019.

On our way out of Geier Hall, we were talking with a few teachers of ours: Ms. Dover, Mr. Swayze, Mr. Goodroe, and Mrs. Koch and, eventually, we asked them how crazy it would be if the teachers starred in one of our school plays. After laughing about this silly, pie-in-the-sky idea as a joke, Owen and I quickly started thinking about how to make this wild idea into a reality.

After our last exam, we sent out an email recruiting the teachers who we talked about this play with and soon after we sat down to start writing the write it.

First, we needed an outline for the play so we decided to base the characters loosely off of Diary of a Wimpy Kid because we knew we could easily assign specific teachers specific roles that would fit them. For example, Dr. Tomashot as the rockin’ rebel character and Ms. Dover as the queen bee.

Throughout the summer, our team worked hours and hours trying to create the most chaotic, absurd, and goofy play that would still make sense. We thought that time travel was a great idea because it gave us a variety of options for how we could move the story forward. We both discovered that the great thing about writing our own play is that even though our ideas were crazy, we had nothing holding us back.

By the end of the summer, the play was finished. We still didn’t have an official name for the play, so we decided to call it “The Production” because of the mystery it created.

When school started in August, we sent the script to the teacher cast and eagerly waited for their responses. Most of them laughed because they didn’t think that we’d actually spend time to actually write a full hour-length play, but we did. We set the date and encouraged the teachers to read over their scripts and get an idea for their crazy costumes.

After Christmas break, we decided to set an official date. Most of the teachers we had cast were still skeptical about the play, but we reassured them that it was still going to happen. Throughout the month of January and into early February, the cast was embracing their characters and practicing for their performance. For example, Mr. Swayze practiced his character’s German accent and original song; similarly, Mrs. Cuppia practiced her best British accent.

As the play came closer into view, Owen and I thought it would be funny to invite special guests to our play. At first, we were messaging celebrities as a joke, but then we deiced to invite someone who we really did want to show up to our play, one of our favorite actors and comedians, Fred Armisen.

To our surprise, he said he’d love to come but he was in Chile working on a project so he regretfully could not attend; however, the fact that he responded to our messages astounded us. The fact that our little play actually had received some celebrity recognition was amazing!

“The Production” debuted on February 27, 2020, and the dream that we thought was crazy actually turned into a reality. “The Production” was Mount Pisgah’s first-ever play written and directed by only students and it was the first play to star only teachers.

The simple and funny idea that Owen and I thought almost a year prior turned into something better than we could have ever imagined.