The Greene County High School Drama Department is preparing to do something slightly different than what has been done recently with the upcoming fall play.

Director Darren Jackson tells Raccoon Valley Radio they are doing three short stories from Edgar Allan Poe, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Senior Charlie Cooklin plays one of the main characters in “The Tell-Tale Heart” but says the story is different than what people might be used to, where his character and his wife find gold in the basement of a house where an elderly man had left it, but the husband keeps seeing the elderly man staring at him, causing him to go insane.

Senior Maggie Mikkelsen is the main character in “The Murders in the Rue Morgan” that is a detective and knows everything that happened in the murders of two young girls, but helps the assistant with the investigation with clues. Mikkelsen points out this is her first time being in the fall play as she describes who got her interested in doing it her senior year.

“It was basically just Mr. Jackson coming to me in class one day and be like, ‘Hey, you do speech why don’t you do the play?’ And I was like, ‘Um, alright I guess.’ And then I showed up to practice one day and he gave me a part.”

Senior Randa Linberg plays a 16 year old who is in love with a 24 year old man in “The Cask of Amontillado” and her father is trying to stop her from running away with the 24 year old man. Linberg has also never been in a high school play and she shares her thoughts about rehearing in a smaller group setting with just being in one short story.

“I personally have five people in my group, in my act, and these are people that I don’t usually talk to, and it’s just kind of fun to branch out to new people and just make new connections. It does make it a lot easier to memorize lines, especially when you’ve got the same people you’re working with every week.”  

Performances are this Friday and Saturday at 7pm at the high school auditorium. Tickets are available at the door for $5 for students and $12 for the public.