For the first time ever, the theater department will host an interactive performance, “Tony and Tina’s Wedding,” this Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m. in the CPHS school cafeteria. This production is based on a real wedding, but instead of a traditional line-by-line play, the actors interact with the audience and vice versa.

“There’s dancing, there’s food, you can mingle, [and] the play continues, so the crazy things that happen, happen around you and sometimes include you,” theater director Alisa Mirabella said. “So it’s totally interactive. A lot of it has to be improv, there’s a very loose script, [but] they [do] have to include certain things because the audience is there, [but] really anything could happen in addition to the fiascos of the script.”

One of the lead actors, senior Devin Cannon, plays Tony, the ‘people’s person’ as he describes the character. Cannon said that he connects with Tony because he can understand his temper.

“I can relate to how he gets frustrated during a lot of chaos,” Cannon said. “[Tony’s] solution to that is to just be louder than everyone else to calm them down, [and] that’s something I also do [in similar situations].”

Similarly, senior and lead, Emma Vaughn, said she understands her character, Tina. She said she likes how energetic and active Tina is.

“I think I can relate to her spirit,” Vaughn said. “She is very lively and fun and that it’s something I exhibit in my everyday life.”

The actors aren’t the only part of the play though. There have been many preparations with design and costs as well. Mirabella said that it is kind of difficult for the crew to practice because they don’t have the exact setting and supplies yet.

“It’s very hard to rehearse because we don’t have the audience and we don’t have the tables that we’ve rented, so [instead] we have those long cafeteria tables and [other problems] to go around,” Mirabella said. 

Despite these problems, Mirabella organized a roller-skating outing for the students. They were required to be in character from the moment they stepped out of the car to the moment they got back in.

According to Cannon, this get together proved to be a lot harder than he thought, but it ultimately helped him prepare for interacting with strangers while in character, which led to some odd experiences. 

“[During the roller-skating event] this kid fell over and hit his head and was crying,” Cannon said. “So me and a bunch of other people in the cast were like ‘oh dang,’ so out of nowhere you have this swarm of people talking in jersey accents huddling around this crying kid asking him if he’s okay and helping him out.”

As for Vaughn, she said that this event helped her understand how to interact with each other as her character.

“I think it also allowed for new relationships to form and some creative improv to happen,” Vaughn said. “The only real problem I had was with falling down all the time, I’m just not that great at roller skating.”

The production of “Tony and Tina’s Wedding” is only the beginning of what theatre will offer this year, as there will be a couple more traditional plays throughout this year as well. 

“This is the first year where we’ve had the whole season planned out all the way through, and we picked a lot of very different plays,” Mirabella said. “The idea was to give more people an opportunity to find something they like.”

Tickets are no longer available for this production, but you can look forward to “Stage Parents” on Oct. 18.