As the raven watched her from outside the window, ELA teacher Ms. Daria Morgandorfer sat back in her chair with a deep sigh of relief.
She'd done it.
She'd finally finished casting Hamlet.
With RADs.
Well… mostly RADS.
Ms. Morgandorfer hoped she wasn't making a mistake casting Fredator Sargent as Hamlet – he'd startled her the day of the auditions by reciting Hamlet's lines by rote in a voice the BBC would have joyfully claimed as its own when until now all she'd ever heard from him or his twin brother were random grunts, clatters, and hoots when they weren't hurling footballs at each other between classes.
To waste that voice, that ability, no.
But the bulges. Oh God, the bulges.
Daria enjoyed shaking things up, but baggy pants and long, loose tunics might be less… ummmmm, controversial.
She cast Tedator as a balcony – as far as she could tell, he didn't have Fred's linguistic gifts, but where you saw one Sargent brother, you saw the other. Why fight it? Because in the chaotic world of High School productions, you worked with whatever bothered to show up.
Hamlet was cast, but who was his Ophelia?
Easy. Ophelia was the new girl, Gilda the golem.
Gilda was dainty, cute, and smart; not at all like the one in the old silent German Expressionist film, all big, dumb, and lumpy. Hopefully Tedator as the balcony that Gilda had to stand on to make up for the difference in heights, wouldn't accidentally drop and smash the exquisite Gilda, who was barely 18" tall, into a million little pieces.
How would you even BEGIN to fill out an accident report for something like that?
Speaking of disasters, she'd decided to drop Draculaura as Hamlet's morally questionable mother. Draculaura, poor girl, stammered her way through Gertrude's lines before bursting into tears and hiding under a table in the girl's dressing room. Wardrobe Mistresses Clawdeen Wolf and Maggie Schmidt, the other new girl, were about to get a new Assistant Wardrobe Mistress because Draculaura's father was always good for a few hundred towards set-building as long as they used products from his many businesses with the logos clearly displayed and his precious baby had something to do with the production even if it was selling cookies and punch in the lobby.
Anywaaaaayyyyy, Daria Morgandorffer had to admit, the kid had a talent for fashion – why waste it?
Then there were the two large Kaijus, Okuyasu and Josuke.
Oh God. Those two.
The two walking fire hazards showed up late in home-made costumes made out of old curtains held together with duct tape which looked like they forgot to remove the curtain rods before putting them on.
Once on stage, in between reciting lines and shoving each other back and forth, one or maybe both accidentally set fire to their scripts, and then the stage curtains – but they DID know their lines, happily bellowing them over the blare of the fire alarm while stomping on the spreading flames.
The fire department knew Okuyasu and Josuke by their first names - gee, what a surprise.
As with the Sargent twins, Daria didn't dare split them up, having learned this the hard way their Freshman year when tired of their antics, she moved them across the room from each other.
Which only gave them a bigger audience.
Okuyasu, the louder, more obnoxious of the two, shoved pencils up his nose, causing a complete uproar. Not to be outdone and because there were girls present, Josuke set a fistful of pencils on fire and downed them in one gulp. Before Daria could calm the class to continue "The Crucible", the two pencil abusers devolved into a pissing contest over whose flame was bigger.
Which ended with them towering over tiny Daria, blushing and muttering apologies as firetrucks pulled up in front of the building while their uncle and her ex, Mr. Kujo the biology teacher, helped her fill out the incident report with a borrowed pencil.
Okuyasu and Josuke as Gildenstern and Rozenkrantz? Typecasting or not, she could do a whole lot worse.
Tina Morph, the big girl who couldn't stop giggling was tentatively cast as Ophelia before Daria saw Gilda and changed her mind. She would be put in charge of lighting and sound. She too, brought her own homemade costume and an elaborate jeweled wig, which was much better than the two friendly neighborhood pyromaniac's. She and, (uhhhhh, Orange? Pink? Or was it Red?) Whatever was under that heavily covered exterior had quickly made friends with Tina and was good at leaping from the rafters and would be great for adjusting spotlights.
Ghoulia Yelps… tricky, but she could be Spectra's understudy as the ghost of Hamlet's father… Ooooh! Why not dispense with the beard and do a gender-bend? "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatia, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Daria murmured to herself and then shook her head. No, not this time – she already had enough chaos.
Maybe next year.
Ms. Morgandorfer rose, the final casting list hot off the printer. She'd tell Ms. Lane the art teacher all about it in the Staff Lounge during their shared afternoon coffee break after posting the list in the hall.
Lucky Ms. Lane. She only had to handle sets, props, and programs.