A New Jersey high school adapted Alien for its spring play

Like something out of Rushmore or Bob’s Burgers, a group of highly-motivated students and teachers in New Jersey staged an elaborate play based on Ridley Scott’s classic science fiction film Alien earlier this week as spotted by The AV Club. It’s not your typical high school spring play.

North Bergen High School’s drama club staged the play on the 19th and 22nd this past week, and one of the school’s students posted some details about the production on Reddit. They noted that it follows the plot of the film, “with a few scenes added to kill time for scene changes,” (which apparently included the Xenomorph walking amongst the members of the audience). The school put together a trailer for the production earlier this month.

What’s remarkable about the project is the level of detail in the costumes and sets. On its face, Alien isn’t exactly a simple story to convey, with complicated costumes and special effects. Despite the technical challenges, the play included scenes like Kane’s implantation and later death by chest-burster, and sets like the space jockey.

“The chest burster has someone underneath the table. There’s a separate person who wears a fake head for Ash attack the others. And there’s someone inside one of the eggs holding a facehugger and throws it at the person playing Kane.”

The students also created the Xenomorph and space suit costumes, as well as sets that included airlock doors that opened and closed. What’s more, the student says that the school didn’t pay for any of it: the students themselves raised the money themselves, and build their props and costumes from recycled materials.

The entire production looks to be an amazing display of creativity, and it’s a huge step above your usual high school spring production. Maybe next year, they’ll try out Aliens.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/23/18278701/alien-high-school-play-new-jersey-north-bergen-ridley-scott