By Alex Doser-

It’s not very often that school plays need to worry about the technical difficulties of a giant puppet plant devouring one of the actors, but in Mount Vernon’s upcoming production of “Little Shop of Horrors,” this is precisely one of the concerns.
Safety became a serious matter when the plant collapsed on senior Marcus Dunford during a rehearsal. Marcus controls the movements of the plant puppet. There were no serious injuries in the collapse and the plant was rebuilt the next day, but the worry continues about this happening again.
Finding a plant puppet for the show was extremely difficult. One was finally ordered from Chicago and brought in two weeks before the show. Marcus will operate the plant for the show with junior Zak Moran providing the voice. The duo have already run into their problems with the situation, saying that getting the timing down was very difficult.
The show is directed by senior Annabeth Lucas with senior Alex Doser as the music director. The show will premiere on Saturday, Sept. 24 at 7 p.m., and the next show will take place the following weekend on Saturday, Oct. 1.
A rock musical adaptation of the 1960 Roger Corman film, “Little Shop” tells the story of a young man named Seymour, coming from meager beginnings, and spending his days working in a plant shop to get by. After finding and displaying a mysterious-looking plant, business finally begins to boom, and things finally start going well for Seymour. The catch is that the plant only feeds on human blood. Seymour is now faced with the ethical dilemma of whether or not to feed people to this talking plant in order to continue his success.
Featured photo by Alaina Risse