Breaking Badly, Acting Hilariously: A Look at Sequoyah’s Fall Theater Productions

Sequoyah’s biannual theater production is regarded as one of the school’s many entertainment highlights, along with the Science Ambassadors’ always-intriguing lunchtime events and High School Director Marc Alongi serving up waffles during Talking Leaves season. Sequoyah’s Theater teacher and Chair of the Performing Arts Department Arden Thomas tends to serve up a sumptuous dramatic spectacle twice a year, aided by eager student participation. This past autumn, eight Sequoyah students performed two separate one-act comedies: Jonathan Rand’s Breaking Badly and Peter Shaffer’s Black Comedy. 

Eli Regardie ’25, a veteran of the Sequoyah Theater Program, reflected on the fall show from both an acting and directorial perspective. Regardie, who co-directed the slapstick play Black Comedy along with Thomas, has participated in every Sequoyah play and musical since his freshman year. However, he explains that there’s something special about this year’s shows: “Breaking Badly was a super fun play because it was a lot of short scenes, and we got to have fun and be a bunch of different characters. And my favorite part of it was the scene where I got to be a grandma and an Italian guy and an accountant. That was a really fun show just to play around with and have a lot of very broad comedy and try different things.” (Audiences can vouch for Regardie’s flawless performances when impersonating practically everyone under the sun.) And Black Comedy holds a place dear to Regardie’s heart not only because the play marks his directorial debut but also due to fond memories he has from many long weeks of rehearsal with the cast. “The funniest moment of this show was when Eva sniffed Alex's arm for the first time when she was very drunk and pretending that she really likes rich people, and our whole cast burst out laughing,” Regardie related. “We could not keep that moment together until maybe dress rehearsal, so I think that was the funniest on-stage moment for us.” In order to maintain sanity during the lengthy nights at Lineage Performing Arts, Regardie credits the cast as well as tech crew Ethan Wong ’25, America Rosales ’25, and Charlotte Biancheri’ 26. Additionally, he’d like any readers to know that by the end of the show he acquired 18 bruises from bumping into things, but “it was worth it.”

Perhaps less physically injured than Regardie, but no less memorable, was fellow Black Comedy star Eva Famosa-Enenmoh ’27. Famosa-Enenmoh, who played the opinionated neighbor and covert alcoholic Miss Furnival, has participated in theater throughout her middle school years and previously acted in Sequoyah’s production of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice in the fall of 2023. Famosa-Enenmoh praised theater as a way to expand one’s social circle, stating, “It [a play] all really comes together in a wonderful way and I think there's a lot of little things that I really love about theater, like the intentionality and the creativity and the community.” When discussing Black Comedy and Breaking Badly, Famosa-Enenmoh applauded the student direction for both plays, calling her experience “really special” and drawing attention to the show’s jokey, slapstick physical comedy, which veered away slightly from Sequoyah’s history of more dramatic productions (Carrie, anyone?). Famosa-Enenmoh’s favorite memory from the rigorous rehearsal schedule was when “we had this microphone in the theater area… and we started playing music through the mic’s Bluetooth and we danced to FE!N.” Clearly, a good time was had by all, on and off the stage.

Lastly, highlighting the intensely student-driven process of crafting these two shows was Breaking Badly’s director, Atlas James ’25. James, whose theater career extends back to the age of eight, has participated in nearly all Sequoyah theater productions throughout their tenure at the school. Like Famosa-Enenmoh, James is a staunch advocate of theater’s unique ability to bond people over a shared passion. They said, “Theater is a very beautiful tool for expression and discovery. I think it's also led to some of my closest friendships. And I think you don't get that in really any other art form, be that other types of performing arts or visual arts. There's a uniqueness to the emotional closeness and rawness of theater that you don't find anywhere else.” And this particular fall show exemplified the spirit of community perfectly, James added. “We had a very close knit and very small cast. We were able to get to know each other really well, and many of us were coming into theater for the first time, and we put on a great show. And obviously, as with anything, there were ups and downs, but overall, it was a massively positive experience.” James further praised the actors for breathing life into two plays they described somewhat negatively as “okay” and “gimmicky”—the dedication of the actors changed your run-of-the-mill slapstick comedy into something really funny and really special. 

Immediately upon finishing the successful four-show run of Black Comedy and Breaking Badly, Sequoyah’s indefatigable troupe of thespians has already begun rehearsals for the spring musical, Alice by Heart. The show, which merges aspects of Lewis Carroll’s famous novel Alice in Wonderland and the historical events of the London Blitz, has been performed off-Broadway and now awaits its debut on an equally prestigious stage: Sequoyah’s. While eager theater lovers await what will surely be a smashing success, they should keep these final words from James in mind: “Thank you to everyone who supported the actors and myself in the production. And yeah, keep coming to our plays.”