FORMER STUDENT, TEACHER REUNITE ON 'RUMORS' SET

Rachel Roberts was in the ninth grade the last time Cape Central High School mounted a production of Neil Simon's comedy "Rumors." She wasn't involved. But she subsequently figured prominently in many CHS productions, including a lead in "Barefoot in the Park," and she has won Best Actress awards for her work in University Theatre productions at Southeast Missouri State University.

Now a senior at the university, Roberts has returned to Cape Central as a student teacher and is helping her former drama teacher, Cynthia Wyatt, direct a new production of "Rumors" at CHS. (See review, Page 12B)Roberts began the fall semester at Central High School and helped with the auditions for "Rumors." She now is student teaching at Jackson High School but asked if she could come back and work on the "Rumors" production."It's really weird having her back here," Wyatt says of Roberts."Now I see why we got along so well," Wyatt says. "We're so much alike. We see the same things on on on stage."When one spots something that needs to be changed onstage, the other often is out of her seat before anything can be said.

Roberts thinks the likenesses are natural. "I spent so many years under her direction," she says. "We know we're mirror images in a lot of ways."University students usually are not allowed to student teach at their alma maters but Roberts was allowed to because her major, speech and theater education, is relatively rare. She comes from a family of teachers and wants to be one herself."To be a teacher you have to be an actor," she says. "And to be a director you have to be a teacher."She knew she wanted to act in the seventh grade after watching a videotape of a cousin in a play about a gerbil. Her response: "You get to do that for fun?"But Roberts' first acting experience under Wyatt wasn't anything for Broadway to notice. The students were rehearsing scenes with partners and Wyatt threatened to kick Roberts and her partner out of the show. "We weren't getting it," she said. But they did get it.

During Roberts' senior year the auditorium where the plays are staged was refurbished. She views that gift now from a new perspective."It's nice to appreciate what I had, what a fantastic facility my senior year was spent in," she says.

There is one difference between the Wyatt and the Roberts approach to drama. When things seem to be going wrong, Wyatt has had the experience of seeing them go wrong before."I've mellowed a lot," she says. "(Rachel) still gets excited about things."Even about the smallest of parts.

At the very end of "Rumors," a voice heard from off-stage provides the surprise ending to the comedy of errors. It is Rachel Roberts' triumphant return to the Central High School stage.