The theater department opens William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” tonight in the auditorium. The show will run Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 if purchased at lunch or $7 at the doors.

Director Dona Dye said “The Tempest” is a play that has delighted audiences for almost 400 years and is regarded by almost all scholars to be Shakespeare’s last complete work. Ultimately, “The Tempest” is a play about magic.

 “It is a series of illusions that dissolve into reality,” Dye said. “It’s about the destruction of power, the madness of revenge and the possibility of human redemption through magic and love.’”

Sophomore Cassie Brawner, who plays Lord Adrian, said it was hard to memorize Shakespeare.

“It was their language which is completely different from how we talk today,” Brawner said. “I play Lord Adrian. I think they cast me [a male lead] because I am flexible with characters, and they thought I was mature enough to play the part.”

With 50 hours of rehearsal after school and on weekends, the cast along with the crew and tech theater classes that constructed the sets have prepped for opening night for more than a month.

“The whole cast is coming together and putting on a great show for everyone,” junior Spencer Lane said.

Lane said the director made a couple of adjustments to the play to make Shakespeare’s diction a little easier to understand.

 “I really like this play because you really get in depth with the characters and you become the characters, which is really cool,” Lane said. “Shakespeare is meant to be acted, not read in a desk.”