Jewels Issacs

Zavian Juarez and Alexa Lewis fighting during the final conflict

The Canyon Ridge High School Theater Department brought back 2022’s production of N.M.E. for a sequel called N.M.E. Resurrection.

The first N.M.E. was written to revolve around Twin Falls and Jerome being invaded by aliens that take over adult minds but leave teens and kids to their own devices.

The original N.M.E. introduces N.M.E. aliens. The name stands for Neurological Manipulative Entities. The show took place within both Twin Falls and Jerome, while the second play took place in only Twin Falls with mentions of Jerome. 

Both plays aimed to highlight “the capabilities that teens have and how often they are underestimated by adults,” said Mr. Seve Isaacs, theater teacher and director of most CRHS’s plays.

The original N.M.E. play was written by a group of students from Jerome and CRHS high school: James Atkin, Calvin Vinson, Easton Bradshaw, Clover Herald, Korbin Slagel, Alex Keller, Emmalee Osborne, Kaleb Parsons, Rian Spangolo, Isaacs Steele, and Jojo Tanner, along with the theater teachers from each theater department.

“We don’t have our Jerome students contributing to this story with us. We wanted them too, but they had already begun working on a play… so there was just a significant conflict there,” said Mr. Isaacs.

N.M.E. Resurrection was mainly written by Matthew Myers, CRHS senior, actor and writer of N.M.E. Resurrection, with additional help from Mr. Isaacs. Three side stories were written by Olivia Valentiner, Jessie Bordwell, and Lilyann Triplett to add more actors to N.M.E. Resurrection.

All the students that performed in the original N.M.E. have graduated except Taryn Suckow, Saphira Judkins, and Matthew Myers who all performed in N.M.E. when they were freshmen in 2022.

“This is my first time being a lead in a show, and that’s a big thing. A big issue I came across with the original N.M.E. was that my character was very one note, and that was something I took issue with while writing the play,” said Matthew Myers.

The Theater made a comeback with the large group of freshmen wanting to join this year. “Our theater program in the last couple of years has really shrunk, we’ve kind of struggled with retention for some reason,” said Mr. Isaacs.

Matthew is an aspiring writer, and if both plays were to be published, “they need to be completely rewritten” and cut down because “the original N.M.E.” was “long” and “boring,” because of long dialogue and no action, according to Matthew.

N.M.E. Resurrection was performed on October 22nd, 23rd, 24th, and closed on the 25th.