Students get ‘Original’

Estancia High School’s “The Original Show” is still an original concept 30 years after its inception.

The unique production is a collage of student-written, student-produced, student-acted short sketch comedy routines that’s playing at the school’s Barbara Van Holt Theatre tonight and Saturday.

Unlike a traditional play, the show morphs constantly and requires its actors to adapt and improvise.

“It makes you think on your toes. Things are changing all the time. We completely revamped two sketches on a Wednesday and opened on a Friday,” said Nick Juarez, who acted in the show in 2005 and 2006 and is now the assistant director.

Juarez said the show was the highlight of the year for him when he had a chance to act in it.

In his favorite sketch from when he was in the show, he and a group of other actors are on stage, pretending to write skits for the “upcoming” show when a syncopated beat starts playing.

One by one the actors, who are all dealing with frustration because of writer’s block, lose focus and gradually slip into a dance routine.

“The sketches that are usually well-received are the ones that revolve around spoofing things that happen at the school,” said Director Carlo Odicino. “A lot of the students at Estancia really identify with those.”

The beginning of this year’s show, for instance, is constantly interrupted by mock announcements by the “principal” over the public-address system, poking fun at Principal Phil D’Agostino’s apparent knack for giving constant (and often conflicting) updates during classes.

Odicino works with the students as they are designing and perfecting their skits. He tries to emphasize making them unpredictable and coming up with good punch lines.

To make the audience laugh, you have to make sure that they don’t “see the joke coming a mile away,” the director said.

Students submit about 100 skits total, which Odicino whittles down to 40 or 50 routines, each about a 90 seconds long.

Creating the sets and finding the costumes is up to the students.

“For me it was the highlight of the year because it was the show we could take the most ownership of,” Juarez said. Even after such a long and successful run, the director thinks he still has something at Estancia that is unusual.

“We’re the only high school in the area that does anything like this,” he said.

If You Go

WHAT: “The Original Show,” sketch comedy

WHERE: Estancia High School’s Barbara Van Holt Theatre

WHEN: Tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

COST: $10