by Jonathan Weaver
About 90 minutes of silly fun and laughs await local audiences tonight at Armstrong Junior/Senior High School in Manor Township.
During the past two months, more than a dozen junior high student actors have practiced their jokes from the play “How I Met Your Mummy” and tonight, everything comes together for opening night.
Groups of all ages will giggle in the school auditorium at the antics inside “O Howe Dulle Museum” after museum officials are counting down until their new attraction with Egyptian Mummy ‘Yo-Wut-Sup’ opens. Hours before he is set to premiere, a first-time security guard and Archeologist ‘Dr. Dusty Bones’ try to ward off the relic from the humorous hijinks of high school drama students, robbers, and an Egyptian goddess looking to resurrect the body.
Skylar Olenchak, of Ford City, makes her acting debut as “Penny Dreadful” – a television news reporter trying to get the inside scoop of the big story.
“I’m trying to tell everybody that the mummy’s fake - trying to take pictures of him and trying to get proof,” Olenchak said. “I always liked watching musicals and plays.”
Emma Wrighter, of Kittanning, plays “Jody” – a student aspiring film-director who sneaks into the museum with her friends, Rosie and Carla, to make a mummy movie.
“I sort-of get them into trouble – I don’t want to take the blame for anything,” Wrighter said.
Another group security guard “Melvin (Lance Biceps) Trimble” (played by Bailey Bevington, of Worthington) is trying to track down is a group of burglars – led by “Muggs” or Isabella Nanney, of Kittanning.
“(The robbers) are kind-of like the thieves from ‘Home Alone’ - dumb and dumber. It’s a really fun role to play,” Nanney said.
Nanney – one of the other characters in make-up due to portraying a male - was also in the Armstrong Community Theatre children’s musicals.
The four seventh-grade students and the 10 other students are directed by Junior High Band and Music Teacher Denise Gamble – who directed last year’s production and the final junior high production at Kittanning Junior High.
Wrighter, who said she personally resembles her stage character, said the cast has become close friends because of the production.
“First it was until 4PM – then until 5PM. And now, it’s nearly 6PM,” Wrighter said. “We’ve been constantly practicing.”
Tickets for tonight’s production are sold at the auditorium entrance for $5. The show begins at 7PM.
