On October 11 through 13, the Seminole High School Theatre Company performed Rebel Without a Cause. The play was originally a drama film directed by Nicholas Ray in 1955, but in 1968 James Fuller rewrote the movie as a play. Seminole’s play starred Conner Wesson as Jim Stark, Alyssa Eatherly as Judy Brown, and Gabriel Burgos as Plato (John Crawford).

“They [the main characters] were pretty good because they weren’t over acting and they were pretty confident in their roles,” said junior Samir Patel after seeing the play.

The plot is very simple: Jim Stark moves after getting into trouble in his last town, but he manages to find himself in trouble again after trying to make friends with people involved in the wrong crowd. Eventually Stark finds himself playing “chickie,” a game that includes stealing cars and driving off the local cliff, an action that kills a classmate of his.

Freshmen Sebastian Berdecia said, “The plot seemed kind of confusing to me at first [but] over the course became clear.”

To represent the 1950s characters properly, the cast needed to smoke, and that’s exactly what they did. The cast used cigarette-like casings filled with chalk into which they would exhale to create a cloud of “smoke” in the air.

Various changes in the lighting also helped to excite the audience and heighten the performance. During a scene where the setting was a planetarium, blue lights were projected onto the stage and surrounding areas to mimic a planetarium ceiling. Lights on the stage also became slightly more focused upon the speakers.

“I would like to see all the plays in the next seasons because if the first one is as good then the others should be spectacular,” said Freshmen Chase Prichard.

Despite its weighty subject, the play got many laughs out of the crowd, too.

The next play Seminole High School Theatre Company will perform is The Wizard of Oz, on April 11, 2014.