Franklin Regional Thespian Club goes live for spring play, 'The Dining Room'

Ian Sunny has played plenty of characters during his four years in the Thespian Club at Franklin Regional Senior High School.

For his final production, he and seven cast mates will get the chance to revel in not one, but up to four “final” roles.

“This is a chance to showcase the seniors in our club,” said Sunny’s father Richard, who is also the club advisor and the play’s director. “From a director’s perspective, I had eight skilled, highly motivated senior actors ready to go.”

The play, 1981’s “The Dining Room” by A.R. Gurney, is a series of scenes set in different time periods with different characters, but everyone is always gathered around the same dining room furniture set.

“It’s kind of a chronicle of the dining room over the years, and about how we maybe shouldn’t forget what an important place it can be for a family,” Richard Sunny said.

Ian Sunny, 18, said he feels this production is special because of the “strictly seniors” cast.

“We all have a lot of material to work with and it really shows our skills and talents,” he said. “I’m playing everything from a 12-year-old boy to a hippie to a 40-year-old married man.”

For assistant director and senior Alaina Devlin, 18, the focus will be ensuring that every scene looks and sounds right.

“Every scene is a different time period, and you’re working with changing language,” she said. “So everyone is always changing. There’s a scene set in the 1930s, and so the father is very stern and reading his newspaper and not paying much attention to his kids. You have to make sure each one feels different — we have three tables’ worth of props for this show.”

The variety roles for the small cast is part of what makes this show unique, Richard Sunny said.

“You have to have depth as an actor,” he said. “You could do this show with 50 kids with everyone playing one role, but it’s so much more interesting to have everyone playing multiple characters.”

Ian Sunny said that while he’s sad this will be his last time onstage with the Thespian Club, he’s also looking forward to it.

“We have so much talent here, I’m excited to see what we do with it,” he said.

“The Dining Room” will run at 7:30 p.m., May 7 and 8 at the high school auditorium. Richard Sunny said that after the massive amount of planning that went into the club’s virtual production of “A Delightful Quarantine” earlier this school year, “we didn’t want to do that again.”

“I waited until the last possible second to decide we’d be able to do a live show,” he said.

Admission is free, seating is limited due to restrictions.