In the waning weeks of summer vacation, 23 Pleasant Valley Middle School students were writing a play.

It’s the second time teachers Alexandria Gibb and Amanda Altemose have worked with students during summer vacation to write a play. Last summer, their students wrote - with a little help from their teachers - “Spaced Out: Navigating NASA Prep.” This year, it’s “Spooky Island: Monster Edition.”

Gibb said this year’s play started with a similar premise to Agatha Christie story “And Then There Were None,” but it morphed into more of a Survivor-style show.

“We can’t kill off 10 characters,” Altemose said. “It needs to be age-appropriate.”

So instead of facing their demise, the characters get canceled from the show via Monster Council, instead of Tribal Council. See the similarities?

Gibb said it even has its own Resurrection Island, like on Survivor, and immunity idols.

“It’s basically like survivor, but with monsters,” said seventh-grade student Harrison Sullivan.

Claire Roberti, also a seventh-grade student involved in writing the play, explained that the story begins with four friends who go out trick-or-treating on Halloween. When they’re done, they go home to one of their houses and start watching television.

Sullivan said the program their watching is a game show where monsters compete against each other, and in the end one gets to be turned into a human.

The monsters are Zombie, Alien, Frankenstein “Frankie,” Bride of Frankenstein, Invisible Man, Witch, Mummy, Wolfie, Ghost and Vampire.

Altemose said they went with monsters that again are age appropriate and can be put on stage.”

Constructing the costume can be a challenge.

“There are a lot of twists and turns,” Sullivan said about their play. “There’s a lot of stuff that happens that you won’t expect. When I read the play, I just felt like I had no idea what was happening, but I loved it.”

All-in-all, the play ended up having 10 monsters, two hosts, the four trick-or-treaters, an Alexa-style voice service the characters use to order food, and a cast of other characters in commercials also written by the students.

Sullivan said he liked writing the commercials the most.

“They’re all very funny, and we get to collaborate together to come up with ideas,” he said.

“I think the addition of the commercials is another way for them to put their voice in it,” teacher Alexandria Gibb said. “They love writing the commercials.”

The group of student writers consists of kids in sixth, seventh and eighth grades. About half of them were involved last year, and some of them are siblings or friends of those who participated in the program last summer.

“It was like really fun to write the play and see it all come together,” Roberti said. “You’re like ‘How did we do that’. How can we just write a play in like three weeks? It was just really fun to make ideas and see all the different ideas that everybody else had.”

Shelby O’Neill agreed, “I love seeing everybody’s ideas. Every group has such different ideas, so diverse.”

The students began meeting in early August three or four times a week in the morning for three weeks. Most days, there were 16 students who would show up to write, Gibb said. Participation fluctuated based on people’s vacations and schedules. Those who were there were broken into four groups to work on different characters.

“They have really good ideas and they don’t really always have a place to exercise those creative outlets,” Altemose said.

The teachers said the students also learned about set design from Bill Mutimer, an associate professor at Northampton Community College who works with the theater department at the college.

The play will be performed the second week of November, Gibb said. They are planning for a 7 p.m. show on Nov. 9, then 2 and 7 p.m. shows on Nov. 10, and a 2 p.m. show on Nov. 11.

In addition to the student mentioned, the playwrights included: Thomas Cline, Kayla Finn, Iliana Green, David Hoffman, Abigail Lowell, Corbin Roberti, Ella Rufo, Olivia Saffer, Paige DeLancey, Hayden Impellizeri, Almarilys Ortiz, Kora Wills, Brooke Burke, Emerie Gonzalez, Kai Grave de Peralta, Catalina Jacovelli, Kiera Jeffreys, Leo Philipps, Isabella London and Skye Hendrix.

The summer program was funded through a grant from the Pleasant Valley Education Foundation.