Audience part of Sutter High's 'Aladdin'
Sometimes in theater, the audience plays more of a role than just as observers.
Sutter Union High School's "The Magical Lamp of Aladdin" takes this idea one step further — in it, members of the audience assume roles during the performance.
"Aladdin" is scheduled today and Tuesday at the school.
"Typically, we do a children's play in the fall, and we invite feeder schools to kind of recruit future drama students," said Rick Tuttle, the play's director. For "Aladdin," "We bring students out of the audience to play the executioner's assistant. (The students') peers get a real kick out of it."
This version of the "Aladdin" story is an original adaptation by playwright Tim Kelly. It retains the essential elements of the story, but differs from the Disney version with which most are familiar.
In "The Magical Lamp of Aladdin," the evil magician Jammal (Shane Peterson) tricks Aladdin (Ryan Corbin) and his monkey sidekick Alakazam (Damion Cooper) to acquire a magical lamp. But Aladdin tricks Jammal and keeps the lamp for himself to impress the sultan (Nader Hamdan) and win the heart of Princess Jasmine (Analyse Montejano).
"It has many elements of children's theater, and the intermingling with the audience," said Tuttle. "That's why we picked it.
"It also has more characters, and we wanted to showcase our talented students. So we had to find a script that could have parts for all these kids."
Rounding out the cast is Tiffani Johnson as Halima, Kayla Cantrall as the Genie of the Ring, Noel Greer as Scheherazade, Christinah Uppal the Genie of the Jewels and Mikala Kostilvy as the Genie of the Lamp.
"It's a very entertaining show," Tuttle said. "It's being performed by students who really add life to 'Aladdin' and create some fun characters. It's a really delightful show."
