At the recent 7-4A District theater festival, the play was selected as one of three plays to advance to the next level (bi-district) which will be held on April 2 at Decatur High School.
All-Star Cast and Crew …
At the festival, four members of the cast and crew were selected for special recognition. Selected to the 7-4A All-Star Cast was Andrew Long (Sr). Cristian Stites (Sr) and John Corder (So) made Honorable Mention All-Star and Courtney Johnson was selected as part of the Best Crew at the meet.
Members of the KHS cast included Noah Wyckoff as Jack, Drew Fitch as Norman, Cristian Stites as Lucien, Andrew Long as Arnold, John Corder as Barry, Zach Saxon as Mr. Kemper (Barry?s father), Derek Isensee as Senator Clarke/announcer and Aliyah Shaikh as Shelia (Norman?s girlfriend).
a challenging, funny play …
This year the KHS Theatre Department tackled a challenging, funny but dramatic play about the lives of adults with mental disabilities. As described by the Dramatic Play Service, ?The Boys Next Door? is a play by Tom Griffin, first produced in 1986. It deals with four men with various mental disabilities who live in a group home and the earnest, but increasingly “burned out” young social worker named Jack who works as their caretaker.
It consists of brief vignettes about each of their lives. Norman, who works in a doughnut shop and is unable to resist the lure of the sweet pastries, takes great pride in the huge bundle of keys that dangles from his waist; Lucien P. Smith has the mind of a five-year-old but imagines that he is able to read and comprehend the weighty books he lugs about; Arnold, the ringleader of the group, is a hyperactive, compulsive chatterer, who suffers from deep-seated insecurities and a persecution complex; while Barry, a brilliant schizophrenic who is devastated by the unfeeling rejection of his brutal father, fantasizes that he is a golf pro.
little things become momentous and often funny …
Mingled with scenes from the daily lives of these four, where “little things” sometimes become momentous (and often very funny), are moments of great poignancy when, with touching effectiveness, we are reminded that the handicapped, like the rest of us, want only to love and laugh and find some meaning and purpose in the brief time that they, like their more fortunate brothers, are allotted on this earth.
