THEATER: Poly Theater Arts presents their new play, The Three Musketeers—a unique adaptation of the well-known story.
By Dyala Harb, Staff Writer
On January 29, 2016, Poly Theater Arts showed their first performance of the play to a large audience. The play is an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ original novel of the same title, written in 1844. The cast is composed of many students who are passionate about performing. Although many of the performers have been in previous plays, this version of the story offers a new perspective on gender relations that makes this play distinct among other constructions of the play. The Three Musketeers is a suspenseful yet comical play filled with countless duels between the main characters.
Poly Theater Arts’ adaptation of the original story is more focused on establishing equal stature between men and women. “I wanted to find a show that could depict that women could fight as men,” theater director Mr. Chris Markermorse noted. “In his eyes, this play needed a feminine touch or a modern spin,” Serina Estrada (12), one of the main performers, revealed. To clearly depict this idea, The Three Musketeers incorporated various scenes of men and women fighting equally. Additionally, many of the male roles in the play were performed by females and the other way around. “Girls can play guys and guys can play girls,” Estrada remarked. “Having men and women being equal in a play set in older times definitely adds to the comedy,” she continued. This new outlook on the historic role of gender in theater makes The Three Musketeers a one-of-a-kind play.
When creating this version of the story, Markermorse revealed his desire to incorporate a great deal of stage fighting. The large amount of stage combat in The Three Musketeers makes this play far different than Poly Theater Arts’ former plays. “This play has stage sword fighting and our other plays include little to no stage combat,” Estrada disclosed. “I knew I wanted to have a show heavy in stage fighting—one that could lead itself to women fighting as well as men,” Markermorse noted in the play’s program. “Learning to stage sword fight was definitely fun for everyone in the cast. We all had a blast pretending to kill each other,” Estrada exclaimed.
However, the 12 large and 12 minor choreographed fighting scenes were far more difficult than the crew imagined them to be. “We began by rehearsing just the fighting scenes from September until November,” Markermorse confessed. He mentioned that safety was their primary concern, initially practicing the fighting scenes very slowly. “Eventually, the kids started staging their own fights,” Markermorse said.
Markermorse explained that he is incredibly proud of the students’ performance. “Their hard work and dedication certainly paid off in this wonderful production,” he expressed. Markermorse revealed that one student in particular, Alexandra Stetkevich (12), has improved tremendously since the start of rehearsals. “We were constantly telling her to become more masculine and intimidating,” he pointed out. He disclosed that she fought like a dancer and was always being told to ‘man up.’ He concluded that she had a unique way of fighting in the choreographed duels and has shown much progress.
Another student, Zurie Joseph (11), claimed that the hardest part in preparing for the play was “learning and memorizing lines.” This is Joseph’s fourth time performing in a Poly play. “Lines are the worst! We were supposed to be off-script by December 7, but that never really happened. Actually, I’m pretty sure I learned most of my lines one week before opening night,” she shared. The cast and crew have worked astonishingly hard to finally perform The Three Musketeers. The opening night was a successful first performance and we are looking forward to many others as well.