Redwood’s Advanced Drama class is kicking off this school year with a light farce, Noises Off.

The play is a humorous look into the chaotic world of theater.

“It’s essentially a play within a play,” said director Britt Block. “The story is about a group of actors attempting to put on a play and encountering all the things that can go really right or really wrong in live performances.”

While Noises Off aims for comedy rather than substance, it isn’t an easy play to perform.

The play is unusually long, featuring three acts rather than the regular two. The first act shows actors practicing on stage, the second depicts backstage chaos, and the last gives the audience a look at a final, polished play.

“This is a very high-energy production, with some of the most extreme set changes we’ve done so far at Redwood,” Block said. “On a scale of one to 10, this play rates a 10.5 in terms of difficulty. We have to reverse the entire set between each act, and it’s a lot of work.”

Maria Lee, a senior in Advanced Drama, added that the hardest part of the play is its comedic aspect.

“It gets harder to be funny as we practice more and more,” Lee said. “We make a lot of the same jokes over and over until they’re no longer funny to us. But it’s a farce, so we have to keep in mind what’s funny about the play. The audience needs to feel our humor.”

The challenges aren’t just limited to humor, however.

“Because there are so few of us in the play, a lot of the performance depends on our acting and dialogue, and that’s definitely hard,” Lee said. “There’s a lot of difficult timing.”

Despite this, Lee said she is enthusiastic about the upcoming play, a feeling Block said she shares.

“I have absolutely no idea how people will react to the play, but it’s been exciting to work on,” Block said. “The process is fun.”

Noises Off will be playing Thursday through Saturday during the weeks of Oct. 1 and 8. Tickets cost eight dollars for adults and five dollars for kids, and will be sold at the doors.