By Josie Doxsie

Play times/dates: 

Friday, November 14, 7-9 PM

Saturday November 15, 3-5 PM

Sunday November 16, 1-3 PM

Memorial High School’s school play is always a big hit every fall. Students and parents pack the Little Theater to watch the cast perform each year.This year, however, there is an added meaning to the play.

The play, “The Amazing Lemonade Girl”, is based on a true story about a girl named Alex who has cancer and sadly passes away in the end. Memorial’s play will be a fundraiser for Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, a charity founded in her name.

The student director, Abigail Houston, says “The play is about a little girl named Alex. She was an active person who had cancer and started doing these lemonade stands to raise money for Childhood Cancer Research, and she ends up passing away at the end of the play, but it’s also about her legacy and the things she leaves behind and how it’s impacted a lot of other people who have had cancer in their life.”

Abigail is one of these people who knows the impacts of cancer on someone and their family.  She says, “I’ve had a lot of family members who have had cancer, so it really spoke to me. I had an aunt who passed away from cancer. I’ve got a pseudo grandma who’s got blood cancer right now. It’s just something I think a lot of people can relate to.”

“The Amazing Lemonade Girl” is her first play that she has directed outside of theatre class without much guidance. Naturally, there will be challenges of any new task, and she says, “It’s difficult that you’re the one who is the creative force behind it and how you have to have all of these different ideas that you’re sifting through and different ways that things can be done, and you have to choose the one that works best for the group of people that you have.”

As a new director, Abigail says that her favorite part of directing is “how all the plays are something that can be interpreted differently by anyone who watches them.” She also says, “I love being able to take plays that other people have done and put my own spin on it.”

The play isn’t put on solely by the director, however; the cast, crew, directors, and stage managers are hard at work in after-school rehearsals to put on this spectacular show.

If you are interested in watching “The Amazing Lemonade Girl” and contributing to the charity for Childhood Cancer Research, be sure to come to the MHS Little Theatre on November 14-16, at the times listed previously. In addition, you can find more information about the charity, Alex’s Lemonade Foundation, at Alexslemonade.org.