After several years of performing dramas for the annual play, this year Whitman Drama will make you laugh.They’re performing the farcical comedy Noises Off, which runs Feb. 25-27 in the auditorium from 7 to 9 p.m.

“I very rarely do comedy because comedy, believe it or not, is much harder than anything serious or dramatic, especially with high school students,” Director Christopher Gerken said. “People take for granted how easy or hard comedy is because everybody thinks they’re funny, but very few people are, and in order to perform comedy for a large audience it has to do with intonation, building the joke, delivering it and the timing of the piece.”

Although Gerken usually chooses plays that have important overarching messages to make the audience think, Noises Off is more lighthearted and relaxed.

The production unfolds as a play within a play: it follows a troupe of actors and their director as they attempt to put on a poorly-written show. Because the show is farcical, there is no one plot but much physical comedy.

The actors depicted encounter all types of problems—interpersonal conflicts as well as struggles with the set and props. While part of the plot focuses on the drama onstage, another facet highlights what happens backstage between characters and gives the audience insight into their multiple love triangles.

While Noises Off is traditionally a British farce performed by British actors, Gerken modernized the play and altered the plot to be American actors attempting to do a British farce.

In past productions, Whitman Drama used one set, but this year there boasts a full two-story, double-sided set with seven doors and three staircases. The set is all centered around one point that rotates in less than a minute. The first and last act are set on a stage that is designed to look like the inside of a house; the second act is on the other side, which is designed to look like the backstage of a theater.

The entire set was designed and created in under three weeks by technical director Harry Cash and the tech staff. The set completes the show and plays a major role in comedic aspects, Cash said.

“The chief goal of any set is to suspend disbelief and have you fall into the set,” he said. “I think it improves the acting, in that [it] gives them a believable space in which to act and it gives the acting more legitimacy.”

But it’s not just about the set: student director Delaney Corcoran said the Whitman community should come to the play to enjoy the comedy and see friends fall down the stairs or get a door slammed in their face.

“You are guaranteed to laugh out loud in the first twenty minutes and you won’t stop laughing,” she said. “It gets funnier as it goes along, so the end is just pure hilarity.”