Emerging from a four year hiatus, North Drama brings forth greed, the dichotomy between good and evil, love and friendship as it prepares for Shakespeare’s problem comedy: The Merchant of Venice. Playing the role of Solanio in this year’s production, senior Eshaan Mehta anticipates the revival of the Bard. “This is really a nice return to it,” Mehta said. “The last [Shakespeare] play we had was As You Like It in 2017 so it’s really been a while,” Mehta said. From the script to the stage, there are numerous factors of a production that go unseen by the audience. One silent hero is the technology crew. Senior Sofia Martinez accredits their hard work. “There’s a lot of tech that goes into the show,” Martinez said. “The sets are built by students so sometimes they require a lot of architectural planning, work, and a lot of manual labor,” Martinez said. Similarly behind the curtain of glamour, the cast can be seen hard at work during rehearsal. “In a typical rehearsal, we spend 2 or 3 hours, some on reading lines, but a lot of the time we’re standing on stage,” Martinez said. Working in groups respective to their scenes, cast members spend their time blocking, interacting with others and getting familiar with their onstage personas—something junior Ben Richards takes cognizance for. “I feel like a big part of it is feeling what your characters are supposed to feel,” Richards said. “Feeling the right emotion really helps to make the acting better,” Richards said. Mixing diligence, passion and dedication, the cast and crew envision a spectacular performance as their end product. “I’m just looking forward to being in [the play] and performing with everyone. I haven’t performed with everybody in so long- like ever really,” Richards said. Conversely, sophomore Brianna Guthrie’s excitement focuses mainly on the stage display. “I’m very excited to see how we end up doing the set; this is supposed to have a lot of gold and I’m really looking forward to it,” Guthrie said. Guthrie encourages any and all audiences to come and support the production. “It’s going to be a really fun show,” Guthrie said. “Even if you’re not super good with understanding Shakespeare you can at least just enjoy and have a little laugh,” Cautioning students to not be intimidated by Shakespeare’s metric patterns, Guthrie argues the olden play has many modern applications. “I was expecting more of a traditional Shakespeare comedy-marriages, people in disguises,” Guthrie said. “It definitely has those aspects but in addition to that, it has a lot of comments of Shakespeare society that can be related to society still today,”