As the lights lowered and spotlight shifted, the Mighty Viking Players hadn’t practiced an exit for when the show ended so they did what they did best, improvise.

Everyone did their best awkward shuffle backstage while the audience erupted with laughter and applause. As they arrived backstage, everyone knew how great of a show they just put on, even with a few mistakes or line miscues.

“Even if someone were to mess up their lines, they kept improvising and kept going,” junior Kevin Dobson, who played Scott, said. “We genuinely reached a flow state.”

The Mighty Viking Players performed “Gainful Employment,” a play written by Don Zolidis. It follows a group of characters interviewing for a job. Like “The Office,” which pokes fun at the everyday lives of employees at a paper company, “Gainful Employment” pokes fun at employees of MaxxCorp, the somewhat stereotypical evil corporation.

“He finished writing it the day before our rehearsals started,” junior Nancy Smith, who played Romy.

The play included comical characters like Melanie, played by senior Nicole Bianchi, who interviewed Dobson’s Scott, for a job. Melanie represents the hyper-devoted employee talking up the company.

“This is a lifestyle,” Bianchi said as Melanie. “I have Maxxcorp socks. I have a Maxxcorp belt buckle. I tattooed Maxxcorp on my ankle, and that wasn’t enough so then I tattooed it on my knee and on my shoulder.”

Rehearsals seemed to help the Mighty Viking Players bond together through mistrials and laughs.

“My favorite part of rehearsing was getting closer with the people of the class, and, like, creating a bond with everyone,” junior Shyla Dunn, who played Cash, said.

For some people, like senior Jade Worley, who was the stage manager, a favorite part of rehearsing was the connection her classmates made with the characters they had chosen.

Worley fondly remembers “seeing people’s faces light up when they would read a character and they just knew they were gonna try out for that character.”

For the Mighty Viking Players, every individual had their own unique way of getting into character and calming their nerves before the play.  Smith and fellow cast members worked out their stage fright by shaking them out.

“We’d all stand in a circle and we would count to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and you would put your hand in the air and then move in rapidly,” Smith said. “ You would do it over and over until it counts down.”

Other cast members connected through prayer to better bond and get rid of any anxiety that might be bothering them.

“Over half of the cast, we did a circle prayer in the back right before going out,” said Dobson.

Overall, junior Aiden Burton, who played Brandon, found that simply going over lines was the most effective way for remembering his lines.

“I just studied my lines on my own time,” Burton said. “I was worried, but when I got on stage, it just came to me…Instead of stage fright, I felt a thrill.”

Overall, theater director Amber Davis said it was an honor working with the “talented students” in a play that they “chose and enjoyed,”

“Knowing that they had fun and created memories in this experience is just as important as all that they learned from it,” Davis said.