This Friday, March 20th, a 45-minute original play called Thieves of Mercy will be performed at 7 pm in the new black box theater in L1. Thieves of Mercy stars Seth Harper, Andy Rakich, Maureen Regan, Alex Romania and Jesse Vogel. Richard Weingartner, the Wayland High School drama teacher, developed the concept.

The play will have some new faces; two of its actors, Maureen Regan and Jesse Vogel, do not attend Wayland High School. Maureen is a senior at Hopkinton High School and Jesse is an 8th grader at Wayland Middle School. Weingartner explained why he chose them, saying, “I’ve seen Maureen’s work; we had just finished the monologue festival, and I just asked her if she was available to do this project. I’d seen Jesse in some 10-minute play of Corey [Vogel]’s and I thought he was very good. The story is told through his eyes.”

Weingartner described the writing process of Thieves of Mercy as “a process of taking a look at Hamlet and creating a story that comes out of the missing link of Hamlet. Who are these pirates that we read about in the play?” In addition, he said that the play was “written by at least 4 of us, and edited by all of us. We all came up with the language for the writing.”

The concept of Thieves of Mercy comes out of a few lines in Hamlet. “Yes, Hamlet himself is in it, but everybody else is part of this adopted family. They aren’t the movie version of pirates; I would categorize them as coastal raiders. A lot of the story takes place on land,” said Weingartner.

Thieves of Mercy is certainly not your average play. In Weingartner’s own words, “You start this creative process of writing and developing a story, and then the characters themselves take us on twists and turns.”