A change of scenery

2–3 minutes

AHSPA makes its Lenaea Theatre Festival debut

Despite The Play That Goes Wrong’s theater run at AHS ending in November, the cast and crew aren’t resting yet. Instead, they’re preparing to perform a revised version of the play at the Lenaea High School Theatre Festival in February of 2026 for the first time ever.

One of AHSPA’s stage managers, Cinthana Santhakumar (12), is a student director for the play being performed at Lenaea. “Lenaea is basically a theater festival where students can compete in different categories,” she said. “One of the biggest things about Lenaea is the workshops—not just for actors, but also for crew. There are set building workshops, director workshops, makeup workshops, et cetera.”

Schools often take the opportunity to perform scenes at the festival. “There are duo scenes, and like us, people can also bring whole shows to Lenaea,” Santhakumar explained. “But we do have to cut it down a lot because it’s supposed to be no longer than 45 minutes, and our show is over 2 hours.”

To fit Lenaea’s production time limit, AHSPA has to practice performing the revised show. Santhakumar said, “[The actors] have to get used to having a set time limit on the show, which they’re not used to because they usually have the freedom of knowing that if they mess up, they have however much time as they need [to compensate for it]. But we don’t have that freedom when it comes to Lenaea.”

As this is the first time AHSPA is participating in Lenaea, there are some big changes for the cast and crew to get used to. “One of the biggest changes is going to be the set,” Santhakumar said. “We don’t have as much freedom and flexibility as we do with our own theater because this set has to be movable, and we have to be able to take it in a truck there, and then set it up really fast.”

After the scenes, the judges give feedback to the cast and crew members, so some actors see Lenaea as an opportunity for proper critiques on their performance. Ayaan Arif (11), who plays Max, explained, “I want feedback on my movement. I feel like my character is very movement-heavy, and I want to see if my gestures get people to laugh or if they just get weirded out.”

Since the show at Lenaea is very different from the original play that AHSPA performed, there are some changes that the cast and crew are wary about. Grace Zhao (10), who plays Annie, said, “I’m scared about performing in front of people outside of our community. Obviously, I don’t know everyone in the audience here, but I feel like at Lenaea it’s just a wider scope of people.”

Despite these challenges, AHSPA is preparing diligently for their one-act performance of The Play That Goes Wrong at Lenaea with more rehearsals until February. “With Lenaea, I think the biggest thing we’re trying to do is just learn and improve for next time,” Santhakumar said.