‘An Experience Very Different From Traditional Theater’

In the canon of fairytales, stories curated for childhood imaginations (“Don’t cry wolf!”) stick with us as universal, immutable truths. Everywhere from majestic castles to the deep dark woods, you know the characters’ names, their defining traits, and the lessons of their timeless allegories.

But what if there’s more to consider? What depths and intrigue might characters reveal if generations upon generations didn’t automatically echo third-person, supposedly omniscient points of view? In what ways, for instance, might the wicked stepsister be relatable or even likable if she had a chance to tell her side of the story? 

Such questions were the impetus behind Any Other After, the fall play at Friends Academy conceived by Director of Arts Mr. Andrew Geha and created with Theater teacher Ms. Colby Christina Myers — and 12 Upper School students who wrote significant treatments of the original playscript. 

A script that required a few disclaimers. 

Before each half-hour performance, Mr. Geha and Ms. Myers gathered audience members outside the doors and prepared everyone, as Mr. Geha put it, “to experience something very different from traditional theater.” 

Instead of sitting, audience members followed characters around the Dolan Center Theater, which had been transformed into a fairytale village (think Shrek, but edgier) by foreboding music, dark shadows, woodland scenes scattered amongst the unused seats, and seven partitioned rooms at the back of the stage.

Unlike traditional once-upon-a-time enchantments, this immersive adventure started with audience members choosing whom to follow:

• The Boy Who Cried Wolf (Mackenzie Breg ’26)
• Ashputtle / Cinderella (Kayle Cicciari ’29)
• The “Wicked” Stepsister (Jemima Constantino ’26)
• The Good Witch (Charley Dai ’28)
• The Prince (Channing Labonté ’28)
• Briar Rose / Sleeping Beauty (Eleanor Lawton Flatters ’26)
• The Evil Witch (Daphne Li ’26)
• Little Red (Emily Mazur ’27)
• The Wolf (Kody Mitchell ’26)
• The Hunter (Maya Singh ’29)
• The Miller’s Daughter (Charli Zahtila ’26).

Each character’s narrative unfolded in three acts: setup, revelation, change. But revelations weren’t solely intended for the fictional realm. 

Actors flexed their improv muscles and asked audience members provocative questions at arm’s length: How do you know what true love is? Have you ever experienced it? What do you fear most? When was the last time you were afraid? Do you think you’ll be remembered in 100 years?

Audience members were invited to dance with characters during a festival at the play’s midpoint. They were also free to roam and wander the entire time, bouncing from character to character and back again.

Before one evening performance, freshman Paige Schoen spoke in the Dolan Center Atrium with History teacher Mr. Allen Louissaint and Director of Communications Mrs. Andrea Miller about her experiences seeing the show a few times already.  

“Some of the magic is being a little confused the first time you see it,” she explained. “You are stepping into a world where you don’t know all of the characters’ lives and it’s impossible to know what’s going on in everyone’s story. But that builds the realism of the world. It’s like driving down the highway. Everyone is around us, we can see what they’re doing, but we have no idea what’s going on in anyone’s life.”

In a nod to the complexity, all of the stories were stitched together in a powerful, thematic way in the final moments of the performance. 

With the dust still settling on dramatic confrontations between opposing characters (Evil Witch vs. Good Witch, The Wolf vs. Little Red, and so on), the actors coalesced at the front of the stage, deliberately walking in and out of the spotlight and speaking in turns to the entire audience for the first time.

Once upon a time
There was a story
About
A girl
A boy
A prince
A witch
A wolf

The story was told for hundreds
Thousands
Of years
But the story
was a lie.

Youth is not a weakness
Girls are not a prize
Women are not witches
Fears aren’t always lies.
Some endings can’t be happy
Our stations aren’t ourselves
Kisses can’t cure curses
And the difference ‘tween a hero and a monster is...
A moment
A perception
A choice

The story has been told again and again,
To children everywhere
Across the entire world.
But the world cannot be defined by a story.
The world
My world
Lives
Somewhere else
Somewhere between innocence and evil
Between the castle and the woods
Between Once Upon a Time
And Happily Ever After.

As the lights dimmed, the characters let out a deep, collective sigh — the relief of no longer being boxed in by the same old narratives. 

Darkness. Stillness. A long, silent pause. 

In the coda, as the lights turned back on to raucous applause, there was an intentionally designed “happily ever after” for the students on stage. 

“Every actor had equal weight in this show,” says Mr. Geha, notepad and pen always at the ready to capture notes, his booming voice offering gentle remarks and coaching whenever time allowed between shows. 

“In a traditional play, only a few characters get the primary focus of the story,” he says. “Devising an immersive show that gives every cast member equal ownership and stage time — a show in which every actor is essentially a lead — is philosophically in line with who we are as a Quaker school. All the students in this production are going to remember this experience for the rest of their lives, no matter where their story takes them.”

Photos by Amanda Fisk & Sarah Camhi / Friends Academy