The theater department traveled to Stephen F. Austin State University on Feb. 9 and to Lindale High School on Feb. 11 in order to practice their One Act Play, The Women of Lockerbie written by Debra Brevoort.

The play will be performed on March 6 at Spring Hill in order to compete against other schools to advance to Bi-District.

“The show is looking really good,” theater teacher Sally Wooddell said. “We are working on the little details to improve it even more. We are excited, but we still have many more hours of hard work.”

Each of the cast members had a large responsibility to live up to in order to pull the play together.

“I’ve had to do a lot of work on my character,” sophomore Rachel Bowman said. “I play a woman who’s a lot older than I am and who has been through a ton of loss, and I should be carrying myself as such.”

Figuring out how to portray one’s character and developing them through the play is what many thespians struggle with.

“There was a lot of independent research involved,” senior Brandon Fugler said. “Learning how much loss a parent feels after the death of his or her child was rough.”

The women in the play all have to do a Scottish accent and often find it helpful to run ‘Scottish warmups’ before rehearsal.

“Everyday before rehearsal, the Scottish women and I practice our warmups to get into our accents,” junior Madison Celley said.

The cast has found that watching movies such as Shrek and Brave and shows like Derry Girls help with the Scottish accent.

“I’ve spent a lot of time watching Scottish tutorials on YouTube because I was cast as Hattie, the sassy cleaning woman from Scotland,” Madison said.

“The character, Olive, that I was cast for is a stronger, fiercer type of character,” senior Vanessa Zarazua said. “I am the exact opposite. However, I use the character Merida from Brave as a role model for this because of her fiery attitude. The movie has also helped me with the Scottish accent needed for the play.”

The cast and crew dedicate many days and hours of their lives to perfect the acting as well as their characters to pull off an effective performance.

“I have put forth many hours so my role as a Scottish woman would be believable. So many hours of Brave have been put into the work,” senior Karla Skeeters said.

Cast members are not the only ones who make up the play company. There are many behind the scenes members who help pull the entire performance together.

“For my role as prop manager I went through the script to find out what I needed,” senior Katelynn Knight said.

The set is another factor of the play that helps to bring the play to life.

“It took a lot of work to figure out the set because there’s a ton of super specific rules for one-act sets,” freshman Carly Mauldin said. “It’s really hard to make wooden ramps and platforms look like Scottish hills, but I think it ended up looking really cool.”

The cast holds many practices and hang-out sessions in order to form a stronger bond between one another.

“We also have discussions about the topics that revolve around the play to help us portray it and understand what our characters have gone through,” Jade said.

The main priority of the play is making sure the Scottish accents have been perfected.

“All of the Scottish women will get together and help each other so we all seem like a group of women straight from Scotland,” Karla said. “Having other people around me that encourage my accent and my emotions really help bring the plot of this play to life.”

The cast holds many different personalities, which makes the members feel as if there is a nice variety adding to how well they act together.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing the different performance that the other schools have prepared and to see how ours stands out,” Vanessa said.

The cast believes they could focus on perfecting their stage presence, blocking, and portraying their characters correctly.

“A lot of us have to remind ourselves that being afraid doesn’t mean we can’t succeed,” sophomore Brooklynn Hall said.

Though the cast and crew believe they are not quite ready for competition day, they believe they have touched on the true plot of the play.

“We are excelling at our story telling and emotions,” Brandon said. “Some of the crew cry when we practice.”

“I think the cast has done a good job at highlighting the important parts of the play,” Carly said. “It’s mostly dialogue, so the story isn’t really clear unless the actors understand it. I feel like the emotion and story are very clear.”

The Women of Lockerbie touches on an emotional topic, for many, with a little comedic dialogue to lighten the mood.

“The one thing I’m looking forward to this OAP season is showing this play to everyone and giving insight of how a parent’s grief can tear someone apart,” Madison said.