Caitlin Briody Comes Home to Direct Fall Play at E.O. Smith

A Royal Smack-down

Is it “Mean Girls” meets “High School Musical”?

Is it “Heathers” meets “Silver Samurai”?

“Begets: Fall of a High School Ronin” is all of that — and more. It is action-packed with stage combat and stunts. It is full of evil factions in the form of high school cliques. It is funny and powerful. This over-the-top dark comedy finds humor and redemption in a bullying/first-love tale set in an American high school, where a normal teenage nerd battles the typical teenage angst in a very atypical way – by becoming a Samurai warrior.

The acclaimed E.O. Smith Drama Club presents “Begets: Fall of a High School Ronin” by Qui Nguyen, directed by Caitlin Briody, on Friday October 27 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday October 28 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. in the high school auditorium.

Our geekgurl hero goes to war against all the evil shoguns in her school, seeking to overthrow the leaders of the band, the burnouts, the jocks, the royals, and the conservative coalition.

However, in her journey to right wrongs, her own cravings for popularity and power threaten to corrupt her quest to save the school? Will she able to establish a new world order or will violence just beget more violence?

Will our hero become our villain?

“Begets” marks Caitlin Briody’s directorial debut at E.O. Smith — unless you count the senior-directed one act play she oversaw as a student there a mere 5 years ago! Briody was in numerous musicals and plays during her four years at E.O. and says she’s excited to take on this new challenge in part because of how much the drama community meant to her while navigating her own high school angst.

“That sense of community. That’s something I want these students to have,” says Briody. “This was the place you could come and feel safe. Be yourself, be a little more goofy, and more over- the-top than you could be in your classes.”

Briody is giving the current E.O. cast and crew a lot of freedom to make this play their own, from set design to character nuances. With minimal oversight students were painting banners and backboards and devising oversize boom boxes and robot costumes over the long weekend. During rehearsal Briody spends as much time watching thoughtfully as advising purposefully. Her inspiration for this directing style came when she was a junior at E.O., she says, performing in a senior-directed one-act play. “That director, she let us explore the material, come up with our own ways to work it. That show was comedic and it’s when I knew that I really liked comedy.”

Briody graduated with political science and sociology degrees from UConn this year and did theatre with a number of campus groups. She’s currently a stand-up comic at Sea Tea Comedy Theatre in Hartford and elsewhere. So what about the poli sci degree, one might wonder?

“I guess I’m on the Al Franken career path,” she says with a laugh. “A gig on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and then into the Senate.”

See “Begets: Fall of a High School Ronin” Friday October 27 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday October 28 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. in the E.O. Smith High School auditorium. Tickets at the door: $7 general, $5 students and seniors. Mature themes and language make this a PG-13 kind of play.