Photos by Bini Allen

This past Wednesday and Thursday, the HBHA Upper School Drama society showcased their talent, performing two 30-minute mystery plays in the JCC Social Hall, with 100 people in attendance each night. In both one-act Agatha Christie plays, the high school thespians drew the crowd in with the suspense and excitement that comes with any murder mystery. Agatha Christie is best known for her detective novels and mystery plays. Director Mr. Bannen decided on an Agatha Christie play because HBHA has never done a murder mystery before, and Bannen thought something new and fresh would be a huge success. He was right!

The young actors and actresses were incredibly happy with their performances. Junior Joel Gutovitz shares, “It was awesome to see that a huge crowd showed up to support us. It was great to see all of our hard work finally pay off.” Sophomore Adena Goldberg reflects, “I was very impressed by the acting skills of my peers, which was no surprise, but a delight to see.” Senior Kara Kahn says, “I thought that the murder mystery theme of the evening was very fun and different from previous years. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the performers. Everyone did a fantastic job, and the HBHA thespians are spot on!” Bannen says that he was “very pleased with how the students performed,” and that he “absolutely can not wait to do it again next year.”

An imperative part of the play’s success has been Hyman Brand’s tech club, which produced a 12-minute movie that was also showcased last week. Jacob Katz, co-founder of tech club, shares, “It was extremely fun to work on the movie with the drama society. It was difficult to keep it a secret for so long, because we’ve been working on it for months. Overall, I’m really glad that people enjoyed it so much at the performance. It was awesome to hear all the laughs from the crowd!”