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Ghost from the past haunts Judkins play

By Mike Hodgson/Associate Editor

Literally like a ghost from the past, an original play by a Central Coast drama teacher will rise on the Judkins Middle School theater stage next week.

Drama students will stage instructor Mike Liebo’s play “One Deadly Night,” a ghost story based on an incident from his student years at UCSB.

“What’s unusual about it is it comes from a story I heard while I was a student at UCSB,” Liebo explained. “Some girl told us a ghost was after her and was going to kill her, and she had to tell someone about it first.”

Liebo said the student confided she had accidentally killed her mother’s friend, and had to return to her hometown to confront the ghost.

“We didn’t even really know her,” he said. “We met her at an Isla Vista tea house. ... Shortly after that, she disappeared and we never saw her again.

“It was a bizarre story, and we were convinced she had flipped out,” he added. “We didn’t believe there was any truth to the ghost; she was just having a college meltdown.”

Ten years later, Liebo toured England and made a stop in London, where he saw a number of major plays that included “A Chorus Line,” “Mouse Trap,” “Noises Off” and “The Inexperienced Ghost.”

While flying back to Los Angeles, the story he’d heard at UCSB came flashing back, and he wrote “One Deadly Night” on the 10-hour flight.

Although the plot is original, it is also a composite of the plays he saw in London.

It features such special effects as a voice from thin air and characters that disappear one by one in flashes of darkness. It includes a visit by the Grim Reaper, a knife, a rock and surprise plot twists.

A play within a play, “One Deadly Night” begins with the agony and humor of 28 actors auditioning for roles in a play, and culminates with six of them winning coveted roles.

In the second act, audience members may initially believe they’re still watching a comedy as the actors gather for a dress rehearsal. But what ensues is a dramatic ghost story filled with murder, deceit and the supernatural.

The final act depicts opening night, and as the actors nervously await the curtain’s rise, disaster and humor strike, with missing actors, prop problems, sabotage and unprepared understudies.

Liebo said directing a separate cast for each of the four production nights presented a challenge.

“I have four casts, so I forget how hard it is.,” he said recently during a chaotic rehearsal as he shuffled one cast after another onto the stage to run through Act. 2. “But this is really one of my extra talented groups.”

The student actors also have found the play a challenge, partly because of its transition from comedy to drama to comedy.

“I think this is fairly difficult for our group because the transitions are so odd,” Carlie Hughes said. “In the first scene, we’re all having fun, and then it’s a dark and spooky thing where everyone is dying.”

But Kassi Turner said the play is fun because it represents “a different point of view.”

“Last year it was ‘Willie Wonka,’ and this is a mystery, so it’s more fun,” she said. “It’s fun to do scary things and scare people — yeah, this is a comedy, too — but it’s fun to scare people.”

Other students said they find the play challenging because it is a departure from the many comedies and more lighthearted fare they usually present.

But because they are enjoying themselves, the students believe all four casts will pull it together by show night and present “an awesome show.”

mhodgson@timespressrecorder.com