Wonderful Wacky Witches, a radio play written by Katie Moore (‘21) and directed by Chelsea High School’s theatre guild director Paige Conway, saved the theatre guild from a boring and somewhat-scary quarantine.

The name of the play alludes to the storyline, which contains the adventures of four witches in a small village. The witches, Laurel, Gwen, Finnula and Helga, and their side table Hector all go on an episodic journey to save the world— or at least the villages near them. 

Their journey starts when Gwen loses her hat, and the five of them head off to look for it. On their way, they meet a dashing– though somewhat ignorant– Prince Jeremy. Prince Jeremy is played by senior Jax Woodward, who has had an amazing time portraying him.

After meeting Prince Jeremy, the witches end up entangling with the main villain, Rowena, an evil woman played by Kailey Zaitonia (‘22) who is out to destroy every witch’s life. Rowena plans on taking everything that the witches have worked towards and capitalizing on it. She decides that she can make a lot of money from her plan to ruin witches’ lives. 

This four-episode long radio play that will air on a local Ann Arbor radio station is in the middle of its recording process, which is currently put on hold due to COVID-19 restrictions and concerns.

“With numbers rising, and the new restrictions going into place, we don’t want to have anyone in the auditorium for extended hours, especially when what’s left to record is our two episodes with the largest cast sizes,” Director Conway said.

Moore explained that they were originally planning on having all the recordings finished by January, but now they are not sure when the play will be ready for release because of the uncertainty with COVID-19.

Conway, Moore and the rest of the cast are hoping to get back to work soon. Currently, the cast is meeting virtually over zoom for rehearsals. Conway ended by elaborating on when the CHS theatre guild will continue to record.

“We will come back and record those two episodes [three and four] as soon as we feel it is truly safe to do so, with all social distancing and safety measures still in place, of course,” she said.

Many Chelsea residents and cast family members are excited to hear the full episodic journey of Wonderful Wacky Witches. We can’t wait to see what the theatre guild puts together!