Road to Paradise Leads to Scotland
In early August, members of the Drama department flew to Edinburgh, Scotland to participate in the world’s largest theater festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. At this festival, they performed the play “Toad to Paradise,” which was written by senior Alison King. King has been involved in theater since her time at Miraleste Intermediate School, which led her to join Peninsula’s Drama department as a freshman in high school. She has also been an avid reader since her childhood and developed a love for telling stories that later contributed to her play-writing ability. Seth Cohen, director of the Drama department and “Road to Paradise”, sees King’s ability to write a clear and intelligible script at her age as a special talent.
“In my mind, [one of the] qualities for a good writer [is] the ability to create characters that are identifiable to a large swath of viewership,” Cohen said. “[In addition], the ability to develop the relationship between those characters within the text [is essential]. Most [important is] the ability to not stay married to one or two pieces of the script if they are not serving the whole script. I think [“Road to Paradise”] definitely had a lot of [these] elements in there.”
In past years’ trips to Edinburgh, Cohen had wanted to put on a student-drafted show, as he believes original pieces best suit the festival. Despite Cohen’s encouragement, no prior student had been interested in writing a script for the trip before this year. Therefore, when King took initiative and offered to create a script, Cohen was very impressed. “Road to Paradise” tells the story of Hazel and Ivy Flynn obtaining a chance to go to “Paradise” after winning a lottery ticket. Hazel and Ivy meet new friends and reignite relationships with old ones while unknowingly being pawns in a grand scheme set forth by Clarisse Roberts, the owner of the fake paradise island “Isle Mirage.” She chooses specific people each year to win a lottery ticket to her island, where they will then be kidnapped to rehearse an underground musical production to indulge her love for theater. In her script, King aimed to incorporate LGBTQ+ characters without making the play centered around issues regarding the LGBTQ+ community. King steered away from stereotypes and focused on creating unique characters that could embody her vision.
One of the challenges King encountered was finding time in her schedule to fully dedicate herself to writing this play. She also worried frequently about making everything she wrote perfect, but she gradually learned that she could simply go back and edit the parts she did not like, which made the process smoother. After King finalized the script and it was performed at Peninsula on July 27, the Drama department was ready for Scotland. On July 29, they left the U.S. to fly to London. After spending three days there, the group made their way to Edinburgh on Aug. 2 and came back on Aug. 12. Junior and Drama department member Delaney O’Conner went on the trip and played Logan Knight, an innocent and optimistic character who later turns out to be a cunning backstabber. O’Conner and King were grateful for the opportunity to meet so many people who shared their passion for theater and described their time as a wonderful experience.
“I do not even know where to begin with Scotland,” O’Conner said. “It is [difficult to] explain, but it was a beautiful and incredible life changing experience.” With a turnout of 50 people, the performance at the theater festival turned out better than they hoped, since it was a far greater number than they had expected. When seeing her scripts performed, King is filled with pride and happiness.
