On February 28, King’s Academy presented its annual Winter Play Festival with an outstanding series of student-directed plays. With performances each year becoming increasingly student-centered, this year’s plays, which took place in the Lecture Hall, featured not only student directors, but also a student-led technical crew and stage managers who wielded greater responsibility and creative ownership.

“I think it is very exciting that King’s Academy offers students a platform where they can direct and showcase theater that they have made,” said theater teacher and Winter Play Festival curator Meghna Gandhi. “Although our directors and several actors were untrained and first-time participants, the WPF surpassed all expectations. Everyone on the team put in a lot of focused time and effort and lifted the quality of the festival up.”

The first play of the evening was an adaptation of Anton Chekov’s The Brute, directed by Aya Ahmed ’25 and Mohammad Wahdan ’25, and performed by Ahmed, Hamad Alshaikhli ’27 and Ibrahim Saedieen ’27, with Dina Wahdan ’26 as stage manager. Written in a melodramatic style, Chekov himself called the play “a joke in one act.” The directors fell in love with the script, said Gandhi, because it proves that human relationships are completely unpredictable. The play touched on topics such as grief, self-sacrifice, the stress of owing debts, and stereotypical ideas of what it means to be a wife.

The second play, Ashes by Robert Lehan, was directed by Abdullah AlAoun ’25 and Fatima Iqbal ’25, and performed by Adam AlQatawneh ’25 and Megan Ho ’24, with Seonju Ko ’25 as stage manager. The play also touched on the topics of death, grief, love and loneliness as in the play a widowed man is confronted by the spirit of his deceased wife as he struggles to fulfill her last wish.

Elevator by Joseph Mcnair Stover was the final play of the night with Sadeen Alshwayat ’26, Sadeen Hassan 26 , Farah Qerba ’27 and Seonju Ko ’25 working collaboratively to produce, direct and act. In this play, two women in a slow elevator find themselves contemplating death in a show of hilarity and lunacy, paranoia and an overactive imagination!

Rofaida AbdElatty ’25, Abdullah AbuHalimah ’27, Mahdi AlSarraf ’27 and Mufleh Akel ’27 took ownership of the tech team, confidently handling lights, sound, set and props.

“As a department, we are very proud of this event because it gives our students the opportunity for multiple leadership roles,” said Gandhi. “The process involved a lot of exploration, confusion, questioning and experimentation. From script selection to auditions, to designing and directing their plays, students are at the center of all creative activity in this festival.”

“For previous Winter Play Festivals, I contemplated working around one theme,” said Gandhi. “But it never worked. This year, I didn’t bother starting with a theme and yet, all my student directors were interested in plays around one theme: death. I personally think this is a direct effect of the current social-political context our community is functioning and surviving in. What it means to be human is something each one of us is grappling with. We’re constantly reflecting on life and death and loss and pain. As we collectively struggle and watch people in Palestine suffer in real time, me and my team of students just want you to know that the theater is not just ‘all play and fluff,’ that the arts truly help us recognize our humanity and celebrate all things good about ourselves.”