The Advanced Theater students at Wake Forest High School, known as Trouper, plan to showcase their solution performances for Odyssey of the Mind competition in their annual OM Spectaculathon on Tuesday, March 3, at 7 p.m. at WFHS auditorium. Admission is free. Donations are accepted to cover the cost of participating in the competition.
The Showcase lasts about 90 minutes. It is appropriate for all ages, and audience participation is encouraged. Please go to Wake Forest High School website for updates on time and date for The OM Spectaculathon due to inclement weather.
Troupe is comprised of rising juniors and seniors at WFHS who demonstrate a strong work ethic, leadership potential, talent in the performing arts, and multiple creative abilities; they lead the theater department at WFHS. Drama teacher, Marie Jones, started the company 25 years ago when she came to what was then Wake Forest-Rolesville HS. Their original mission was to learn and teach through theater, and that mission is still at the core of what this group does.
“Participating in Odyssey of the Mind, OM for short, offers these students an opportunity to experience theater in a real world format,” says Coach Marie Jones. “They have to budget, plan, experiment, build prototypes, and they get style points for using recycled materials. While they learn these skills, they also share their learning by coaching younger students in the basics of OM. They eagerly embrace opportunities to represent their community and school.
The Troupers brought home five awards of distinction from NCTC’s Regional Theater Competition this fall, including excellence in ensemble acting, excellence and superior in play performances, and two individual awards: excellence in design and production for senior Jaheal Milliam, and excellence in acting for senior, Mary Sass. Now this group of 21 creative and competitive actors prepares to represent Wake Forest in an even more intense competition that combines theater, science, art, classical studies, and technology. Working in teams of seven, they will write, direct, produce, and act a play that offers a solution to a real-world problem, and they will do it all for no more than $125 per team. They do this through Odyssey of the Mind, a creative and critical thinking competition for students ages 5 through college age.
All solutions must be presented as a play. Long term problems tackled by this year’s troupers are:
Problem: to design, build, and demonstrate various devices that complete specific tasks. The team will create a theme where technical failures must be resolved through completing the tasks. There will be a list of tasks to choose from including ring a bell, change the wording on something, sound an alarm, move an object, etc. There will also be a mysterious engineer character. Of course, there’s a twist — all of the devices must be powered by rubber bands!
Problem: put a video game spin on the story of Pandora’s Box. A gamer character will take on this multi-level game inspired by the Greek myth. The game will include a prologue that depicts the original story of Pandora’s Box, three characters representing different evils that escaped the box, and a power meter that represents the gamer character’s health. To beat the game, the player will advance to the final level where it will release hope into the world.
Problem: create and present a performance depicting a Director character that produces and presents a silent movie featuring a humorous villain character that commits three silly acts of “villainy”. Characters in the movie may not speak as part of the presentation of the movie. Instead, like classic silent films, the team will use music played on a team-created instrument and creatively displayed subtitles to convey its story to audience and judges. Also, teams will use a signal to indicate when the movie begins and ends.
OM teams must also solve “spontaneous problems;” in which they are given verbal, hands-on, or combination problems with only minutes to solve them. WFHS troupers have competed successfully in OM at state and world level OM competition and hope to do so again this year.
