photo credit: Gina Alvarado
Montgomery High School students rehearse with Director Chris Schloemp

Art imitates life in a new play at Montgomery High School.

It is not often that new plays, written by award winning playwrights, make their debut in high school drama departments... but such is the case for a new piece called "All in Favor" by Petaluma's David Templeton.

"Well, the premise of the play is that in 1976, in the basement of a high school in in Los Angeles County,” said Templeton. “13 students are behind schedule and trying to catch up in a very ambitious art project they are doing for the American Bicentennial. It's a mosaic, somewhat based on the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but with a modern twist that they have brought to it."

So how did this play end up at Montgomery High School with a mostly student cast?

"I come up with ideas for plays all the time and I am very often sharing them on Facebook saying, 'Oh, I came up with another crazy idea that will never get to be done because it's too ambitious for theaters.' And I happen to mention that I had an idea for 13 students, high school age students and that no theater company is likely to do a play that big,” said Templeton.

That's when the school's theater art program director Chris Schloemp chimed in, and said his students would be a great fit.

"Well, I've worked with David for years as an actor. In all of those situations, the script was still somewhat fluid,” said Schloemp. “So I was used to kind of kind of workshopping material on the fly with him as a playwright at at rehearsal. And so I thought this would be a great experience for my kids."

The mosaic at the center of the play features important figures from American history, and Schloemp says his students actually took on the same issues their characters tackle when real life events forced them to reevaluate the script.

"In the original artwork, Cesar Chavez was one of the people that the students, the characters had chosen to put in their mural. Well, of course then all the new information about Cesar Chavez came out and we circled up under a tree out on the front lawn. David joined us and like they hashed it out and came to a decision that ultimately changed the script,” said Schloemp.

Amelia is one of the students in the cast who spoke on KRSH's The Drive with Daedalus Howell, and she says it's exciting to be involved in the debut of new work.

"When I'm on stage, I'm not Amelia anymore. I will be Kendra in a classroom doing what she does in the classroom and to just completely leave yourself behind, I find really, really fun. It's one of my favorite things about theater where you just get to be someone else. So, I'm really excited to do that, especially since this character has never been performed before,” said Amelia.

Templeton says that during the run of the play, he's been workshopping the piece to further develop the script.

"I've made a lot of revisions so far and given them to the kids. So they got to learn how to change in midstream, something that doesn't happen with Shakespeare or Arthur Miller,” said Templeton. “And then, um, I'm going to be shopping it around and hopefully other high schools and colleges and maybe some other community theaters will find that it fits into what they're doing."

He says that the play is also imitating life...

"And I just found out that the mural that has been designed by an artist who's one of the fathers of a graduate here. He's designed this. It looks like it's going to be displayed at the school in the future on the walls of one of the wings here with a little plaque explaining who each of the historical figures is and what they meant. So it's going to live on. That as a playwright is amazing. I came up with this idea. It becomes this actual mosaic for the play and now it's going to live on as a mural that future kids at the school are going to see,” said Templeton.

The final performances of All in Favor are May 15^th and 16^th at Montgomery High School.