About the EEP Drama Society
Background: EEP and TS
The Halbert and Nancy Robinson Center for Young Scholars sponsors the Early Entrance Program (EEP) at the University of Washington, which allows gifted young teenagers (no more than fourteen years old at entry) to forgo the traditional four years of high school and enter the University three to five years ahead of their peers. Beginning in 1984, a Transition School (T.S.) was added to ease the transition from junior high or middle school. It accepts at most sixteen students each year and consists of five academically rigorous courses in history, English, pre-calculus, physics, and ethics. The majority of those who survive Transition School go on to matriculate as UW freshmen.
The EEP Drama Society
The EEP Drama Society, or EDS for short, is what this website's all about. It's an entirely student-run organization of EEPers who like to act (or manage actors, or make props, or what have you). In addition to putting on a play each year, the EDS board members organize various fun, drama-oriented activities throughout the year. As of 2006, we have put on thirteen plays.
History
The EEP Drama Society (or EDS for short) was born in the winter of 1994 when a cabal of EEPers and T.S.ers decided that it would be fun to get together and put on a play. They performed an original version of C.S. Lewis's classic fable, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in the TS classroom before an audience mostly consisting of family members. Entirely independent of adult supervision, the fledgling Drama Society produced an impressive play complete with background music, a curtain and a fog machine.
The actors had such a good time putting on that play that they decided to perform another one the following year. However, they would need more space to accommodate a better set and larger audience. At this point EDS was officially created, as only student groups can rent campus facilities. In 1995 EDS performed Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, and it was a great success.
In the third year of EDS, the plays chosen by the members were two one-act comedies by Molière: The Flying Doctor and The Forced Marriage. These, like Witness, were performed in the Ethnic Cultural Theatre, which seems to be ideally suited to the Drama Society's productions. The Molière comedies were the first plays to make a profit.
By now a well established student group, EDS decided to perform Arthur Miller's The Crucible in spring 1997 (Just for the record, this was before the movie of the same name was released, so you might say that we were trendsetters). The Crucible has been our largest production to date; at 20 characters, we had recruit younger siblings and TSers to flesh out the cast.
A year after performing The Crucible before packed houses, we put on Joseph Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace. This hilarious dark comedy was made into a movie starring Cary Grant and Peter Lorre back in the 1940s, and we all had a terrific time putting on our own version of it. It's often been said among EDSers that Arsenic is the quintessential play: packed with non-stop humor and action, yet all occurring on the same set.
Our next play was another Agatha Christie murder mystery: Ten Little Indians. In it, ten people are invited by an enigmatic figure by the name of U.N. Owen to a secluded island, and killed off one by one. Despite our having to perform it in the Scottish Rite Masonic Center instead of the ECT, it was tremendous fun and widely acclaimed by the audience.
An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde's satire on 1895 British society, was our 2000 performance. We held a record four performances of it at the ECT, with a combined audience of approximately 500 people. The audience loved it, and contrary to pessimistic forecasts, we turned our biggest profit yet!
The Mouse That Roared is Leonard Wibberley's tale of international conflict centering around the tiny duchy of Grand Fenwick and its wine exports. We performed this play at the Hamilton Middle School auditorium. With a cast of over 20 and the set still drying as we performed on opening night, it was a harried but ultimately extremely satisfying production.
This Website
This site was originally created by Marsha Eng, and was later taken over by Brian Green. Since then it has passed through many hands, and recieved lots of updates before it fell into disrepair. Then Liz Smith took over as webmaster and shaped it up, creating a brand new layout and navigation system.
In 2006, Nathan Weizenbaum took over as webmaster. He cleaned up the internal structure of the website and made a few stylistic improvements, but by and large kept Liz's original layout, which can be seen today.