This year the Avon Drama Club performed “The Empty Chair,” a one-act drama, by Tim Kelly. It is about a group of teenagers recovering from substance abuse. Robert died of overdose and the others are left wondering! Each teen speaks about his/her memories with him through a series of monologues.

As a group, they put in a large number of practices starting back in October. Director Loretta Knodel said, “Throughout these practices, we made several changes to help our performance evolve, such as contacting the playwright to approve script changes that would best fit our cast, and even changing roles….a stage member became a character, and a reenactor became in charge of the spotlight.”

The cast performed a dress rehearsal on Friday, January 21, in Avon with about 90 people in attendance. Next they traveled to Mitchell to perform in the Region IV B Competition on Tuesday, January 25. Coming home with 2nd place advances them to the State Festival in Rapid City.

Haleigh Tjeerdsma and Noah Watchorn each earned superior ratings for individual actor awards from all three judges. The One Act State Festival will be February 3-5 at Rapid City Stevens High School. The group will attend to watch other schools, and will perform their play on Saturday, February 5 at 8:45 a.m.