The Harker Conservatory’s 2016 Fall Play is “Around the World in 80 Days,” a comedy that tracks the voyage of Phileas Fogg as he attempts to circle the globe in the 19th century.

In light of the technological boom of the 1800’s. Mr. Phileas Fogg makes a bet with Andrew Stuart, a member of the reform club he attends, to travel the world in 80 days. He, along with his French servant Passepartout, go on this adventure together, meeting many people including Aouda, an Indian princess that Fogg saves from being sacrificed. During this journey, Fogg is being followed by Detective Fix, a detective who believes that Fogg is the culprit of a recent bank robbery that took place recently in England.

Whereas this year’s play is a lighthearted adventure tale, last year’s play, “The Laramie Project,” was a drama that documented the community’s reaction to the murder of a University of Wyoming gay student Matthew Shepard, thus creating a stark contrast between the two years.

“It’s the opposite of last years play in that last year was all about naturalism, realism, emotional truth, connection through empathy with the story,” director Jeffrey Draper said. “This play is very technical; it’s all about dialects and broad comic characterizations and huge gestures and facial expressions and working in the round. There’s a lot of technical demands this play wants.”

This play is performed on a central stage, also called a theatre-in-the-round. With this unique setup, the audience is seated on all sides of the stage.

Markus Wong (11) finds that this unique type of staging creates a new level of acting and adapt their characterizations accordingly.

“[Being in the round] opens you up more you’re forced to play bigger, you’re forced to play bolder and you’re forced to fill the space,” Markus said. “Not only do you have to act loud but your characters also have to be bold and they have to have strong choices too.”

Aside from the new dynamic, the stage posed a challenge for the performers and director. As it was built especially for this production, cast members had to learn to maneuver the stage in a short about of time.

“Getting into the space at the last minute [was a challenge] because of time constraints and not having our own theater,” Draper said. “Working with the turn table on this set, we learned a lot about how to use it and how to adapt to it, but it made tech a little bit difficult.”

In this play, roles are played by multiple cast members, and the switches between actors for the same role are shown as part of the performance.

“We blocked it in a way so that the audience would understand who’s playing who and that the characters are switching,” Sumi Wadhwa (11) said. “I think it’s easier in terms of memorizing lines for sure because you have specific scenes which you can really focus on and really get the true meaning across without having to worry about forgetting a line.”

The Fall Play is showing this Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. Tickets are available for purchase this week during lunch in Manzanita.

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Eleanor Xiao

Junior Markus Wong points and shouts as he plays Detective Fix in the fall play. The Harker Conservatory is performing “Around the World in 80 Days,” a comedy musical about a British man traveling the world, for the 2016 fall play.