Students at Norwin High School will bring a story to life on stage. And then they will do it again, eight times in the same night.

May 16 and 17 at the high school will feature performances of eight student directed and student written one-act plays.

Nearly 30 student actors will lend their talents to the 8 p.m. productions, which cover a diversity of subject matters and genres.

Lisa Gulasy leads three of those actors as director of "Picnic Time." Written by senior Ellen Lundie, the play combines comedy with more serious elements.

"It's kind of a parody of 'Waiting for Godot,'" said Gulasy.

The play hinges on its outlandish characters.

"There's a happy person, there's a very angry person, there's a depressed person," said Cory Chappo, who plays an unhappy jogger.

The three characters' exacerbated traits bounce off each other, creating both dramatic conflict and humor. Alex Bithrec, who plays an arrogant Brit with anger issues, said his character slowly becomes outraged by the incessant happiness of Sue, played by Amy-Gabrielle Bartolak.

While some of the play's comedy is simply farcical, it works on a deeper level as well.

"I like how it's very satirical," said Bartolak. "You really have to have a certain sense of humor to appreciate it."

Lundie wrote the play as an assignment for a creative writing class.

She said she drew inspirations from reading literature, as well as picking ideas that she liked and bringing them together.

Another one of her one-act plays, "Seven Deadly Sib-lings," shows how the process of bringing old ideas together can result in something new.

"It's basically each of the seven deadly sins in human form," said Lundie.

The personification of human failings is an old trope, but Lundie said she wanted to twist it by portraying the sins as member of a big, dysfunctional family.

Some of the students involved in the various productions wear more than one artistic hat. Vince Holden wrote "Faculty Room," a look at what happens when adults behave like children, but he also acts in another play. Holden said the experience of acting helped inform his writing, enabling him to guide the portrayal of his characters.

"As an actor I know how I want characters to be portrayed, how I would want them acted out," he said.

In another case of dual roles, Frances Black wrote the play "Emergency Room," but she also directs the production.

While the added role means more work, Black said she likes the opportunity to have full control over her artistic vision.

At the same time, she added, as a director she gets to see her actors bring out completely new aspects of their characters.

Her play has no shortage of characters for actors to interpret. Set in a rural hospital, it focuses on the comedic ex-ploits of a mismatched group of doctors, each with their own malformed medical ideas.

Jaslyne Halter plays Dr. Nan Caulfield, who believes all problems are caused by bad posture, even when a patient comes in choking on a rubber duck.

"I put it in my mind that he can't swallow, which is caused by bad posture," Halter said.

The character of Dr. Rudy Gordon, played by Elisa Kos-telnik, also exhibits strange medical beliefs. A surgeon, Kostelnik said her character enjoys her work a bit too much.

Not all of the plays rely on exaggerated characters and their foibles. Liz Hepburn wrote "Same Difference," a more experimental play that uses the same set of dialogue to produce four entirely different scenes.

In each scene the characters and the plot are different, but the words stay the same. The writing posed a creative challenge to Hepburn, who said the hardest part was coming up with dialogue that could be read multiple ways.

The idea of different perspectives also gets an airing in Colin Lindberg's "The Dating Game."

Lindberg describes the play as a look at dating first from a male perspective, and then flipping the table and looking at the same issue from a female perspective.

While Lindberg said he enjoys writing, it can be scary putting his work on stage for all the world to see.

"When you write a play it's completely up to you what happens," he said.