GOOD ‘N’ PLENTY at Thespian Festival

Andrea Murch and Daniel Robertson

This year’s all-state Thespian production, Jeffrey Hatcher’s comedy-drama Good ‘N’ Plenty, was performed yesterday  at the annual Thespian conference, held at the Dublin-Scioto High School.  Directed by Geoffrey Nelson, Good ‘N’ Plenty featured a large cast comprised of some of the very best high school actors and actresses in the state.  Two performances of the play were given for a total audience of approximately 1500 students and teachers.

The play is set in 1976 at Wintersville High School in eastern Ohio — the same high school that playwright Hatcher attended (he graduated that year). The action revolves around the conflict between a hip young social studies teacher and an older, more conservative female English teacher and a game designed to explore the concept of democracy that goes horribly by humorously awry.

For this production, Nelson utilized student dramaturges — the first time they had been included on a thespian show.  One of them tracked down the 1976 Wintersville yearbook and made the discovery that several of the characters are based on real people! Nelson, who has worked on a number of plays by Hatcher, also made an arrangement for the dramaturges to interview him about the play and his own high school experience.  The interview was printed in the program.