By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
For anyone who has attended any high school or Horizon Youth Theatre productions lately, the surnames in the cast list for “The Sidekick” are certainly familiar, but the first names and faces probably less so.
For the second year, the parents of students in the Bowling Green High School Drama Club are “flipping the script” and treading the stage in their offspring’s shoes.
“The Sidekick” will be presented Friday, Jan. 24, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Jan. 25, at 3 p.m. at the Bowling Green Performing Arts Center, 530 W. Poe Road. Tickets are $5 for students, $15 for adults. They are available at the door or online at http://thesidekicktickets.com.
The show is a fundraiser for the drama club. The idea was cooked up in spring 2019 by parents over dinner during the State Thespian Conference. It started as little more than a quip, and grew from there.
So for the second year a dozen parents and drama teacher Jo Beth Gonzalez will dress up in costume, and cavort on stage in a play written and directed by students.
So it won’t be Sophi Hachtel on stage, instead it’ll be her mother, Erin Hachtel, up there in chef’s togs, a toque, and a fake mustache. The daughter is off stage directing her mother and the rest of the cast.
While for the show they’ve switched places, the mother has not switched off her real-life role as proud parent. “She has exceeded every expectation and I already knew she’d do a great job. She’s impressed me. It’s a delight to watch her and be in a show with her.”
Being a director is a new role for Sophi.
“It’s my very first time directing,” she said. “I saw how cool the show was last year. It was so incredible to see all the parents participating in it that I really wanted to be a bigger part of it this year.”
Being a senior, she wanted to direct before graduating. “I’ve never had an experience like this before.”
She found it hard at first to be assertive, especially given it was a cast of parents. It may have been easier with her peers with whom she’d already established a working rapport, Hachtel said.
But she realized she needed to take charge. “We’re hitting our stride,” Hachtel said during a recent rehearsal.
The script,”The Sidekick,” was written by Ethan “Woody” Brown. He was asked to pen the show after some parents saw his first one-act play performed last year. “They liked it enough to let me give this a stab.”
This is his second script to be staged. His third will be presented next weekend, Jan. 29-31, as part of the one acts production also at the Performing Arts Center.
The script was written with the parents in mind. “I knew they’d have a lot of fun with a show that was meant to be wacky. One that they could all have wacky characters, some strange encounters that the kids of those parents would enjoy seeing,” he said.
The play is a comic mystery set on a train. It starts at the end with the detective Valentine (Debbie Long) and the criminal Turner Sullivan (Rob Sloane) handcuffed together chortling about how he almost pulled off the perfect crime, and she stymied him.
They have nothing but abuse for Clout Ontario (Shawn Douglass) who just wanted to be a perfect sidekick.
The story then rewinds to the point just before Clout flops on his face, so the audience can see how all this came to be. Advice to viewers, keep an eye out because that pat ending posited at the start is not what it seems.
Brown is true to his word in providing quirky characters, and all fit well into the puzzle he constructed.
Clout wanders through the compartment learning the stories of all his fellow passengers. The sisters Clara (Candi Hulbert) and Josephine (JoBeth Gonzalez) act out their sibling rivalry in a chess match. Captain Sherman (Tom Pendleton) is an avid fisherman with a strange past — was he a pirate? — and an eye for the hippie psychic Sylvia Sequoia Moonberry (Debi Clifford).
Ryan (Jeffery Lake) is heading to propose to his girlfriend and is ham-handedly trying to write out a proposal, while worrying he’ll lose his absurdly expensive engagement ring.
Sketchy Lou (Mike Walters) is a salesman hawking all manner of strange items, many of which come in handy as plot devices. Annabelle Pickens (Andrea Depinet) is a girl who loves photography.
Then there’s Jack Bowery (Zach Sands), an innocent dad on a shady errand to deliver a suitcase full of money. He needs the pay he’ll get to buy a crib for his unborn daughter.
That suitcase gets stolen by Turner and that sets Valentine in motion with everyone, however unlikely, becoming a suspect.
Sophi Hachtel manages to keep it all flowing, including action that is just below the surface.
Last year’s production, the tale of a small town super hero, whetted the parents’ appetite for the stage.
“We learned a lot last year,” Erin Hachtel said. The parents decided “that if we could do it again here’s some things we would change. Since Jo Beth is willing to trust us with this project, we’re getting the opportunity apply what we learned last year. It’s fun. These people are a lot of fun.”
Zach Sands is a newcomer to the stage. He turned out at the behest of his daughter Chloe. “She just asked me enough times.”
And he’s having enough fun that he might do it again.
Whether this will become an annual production is up in the air. A number of the parents are “aging out” as their kids graduate.
Douglass is one of those, though he said he’d be open to performing again if asked. He acted in high school and has enjoyed a chance to return to the stage.
Erin Hachtel has also been involved in theater.
“This is a lot of fun,” she said. “When you get on stage, you realize how much you miss it. Being part of the whole experience has been great.”
