By KAREN LEIGH Palisadian-Post Contributor Here’s an unusual recipe for success: four folding chairs, Palisades High School drama students with imagination, and a good old king named Lear. Add in one big goal’conquering the Drama Teachers’ Association of Southern California’s (DTASC) annual Shakespeare Festival’and cameras to film the journey, and you’ve got “Will to Win,” a documentary making its world premiere later this month as part of our local Friends of Film series. Prior to becoming head of PaliHi’s film/video department, “Win” director Kerry Feltham had also directed “Waltzing Policeman,” an official entry to the 1970 Cannes Film Festival. He produced television documentaries on subjects as varied as women in the Israeli Army, singer Louis Armstrong, and train spotters. And like other auteurs who capture real life, he is always on the lookout for new projects. “When you make a film, make sure you do it on people who are passionate about something,” Feltham says. “When I got to Pali, right at the beginning, I realized that the drama kids were emotionally involved in what they were doing.” He and writing partner and wife Diane Grant decided the young thespians’ quest to win DTASC’s annual Shakespeare Festival would make for interesting viewing. Every year, DTASC rules keep wannabe Shakespeareans on their toes, mandating that schools must divide students into groups no larger than 10. Those clusters must then appoint directors, create short scenes from the Bard’s full-length works, and visually transport audiences’and judges’with four folding chairs as their only stage props. Feltham’s cameras captured PaliHi students as they streamlined “King Lear” and “Merry Wives of Windsor” for the spring 2004 festival and, with costumes banned from competition, invented unique ways of color-coordinating outfits. “They were really concentrating,” he says of the students, who often practiced Shakespearean accents just feet away from a camera lens. “They barely realized I was around.” PaliHi differed from other schools in that drama department head Victoria Francis allowed students not only to act in the scenes, but direct. Palisadian Amy Gumenick, now a sophomore at UC Santa Barbara, directed “The Winter’s Tale.” “At first it was a bit awkward trying to get my cast’as well as myself!’to focus, and lead rehearsal as if no one was watching,” she says, “but we quickly got used to it and embraced the camera as simply another cast member.” Amy is one of several students whose individual story is featured in “Will to Win.” Viewers see Erica Horn board a school bus early to trek from South Central L.A. in time for morning drama class. Later we drive near the ocean and stop at Coffee Bean with Palisades resident Kallie Kerns. “They were just so stoked to be in drama, rehearsing ’til whatever hour they had to,” Feltham said. So was Feltham himself, judging from his 25 hours of dailies ‘ and the year it took to edit the film, which now clocks in at 82 minutes. Gumenick enjoys the fact that her experience has now been documented “in a way that can be kept for generations to come ‘ being part of this project was truly an honor.” Feltham’s favorite moment of the festival was “seeing people do things really, really well. Like seeing Kallie direct! These kids are better than a lot of professional actors working today.” They have stamina, too, which pleased the filmmaker. “I’m surprised by the way they all self-started. The dedication was tremendous.” That will to win was on display in the raw moments caught on tape, such as one student’s day-of-festival confession to a friend that “I didn’t sleep at all last night.” Then there was Kallie’s interview outtake’after a lengthy ramble on rehearsal particulars, she bubbled, “I’m being really spastic, I’m sorry. I’m just so happy when I talk about this.” That passion is still there’as Amy says now, the movie “gave us all a little taste of stardom.” The world premiere of “Will to Win” is presented by the Friends of Film on Saturday, January 29, at 7 p.m., 941 Temescal Canyon Road in Pacific Palisades. Tickets are $30 per head as part of a benefit to raise money for a new theater to house the award-winning PaliHi thespians. (DVD copies of the movie are available at www.kerryfeltham.com.) Call: 454-1970.
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