“Lindsay Seeley (foreground, at right), playing Principal Bianca Ranchwear, inspects a group of Valley High School students accidentally transferred to her maximum security high school.Matt Johnson/staff photosIt was every high school student’s nightmare.Five students accidentally transferred from their Southern California high school to a maximum security high school found themselves confined to campus night and day for more than a month. The school’s principal took away their surfboards and cell phones, and fed them only spaghetti pie for three meals a day. They were trapped in high school.The scene played out Wednesday night on the South Whidbey High School Auditorium stage, with students from the school’s drama department playing 28 students, school administrators, staff, and worried parents in the original play Help! I’m Trapped in a High School. The performance was the second of the day for the drama students, who have been developing the comedy since the start of the semester. Part of the drama department’s spring comedy series, the play was as much a classroom exercise as it was entertainment. After acting in front of 200 high school students Wednesday afternoon, the drama troupe put on an evening production for more than 100 parents and friends.Drama teacher Mike McInerney told the audience that the play was far from being completely polished and rehearsed. Students playing in the comedy were still learning about acting, timing, and stage direction. But, McInerney told the audience, they should feel free to laugh at anything that struck them as funny.I encourage you to enjoy things a little more than you might normally, he said.As McInerney had promised, the students missed a few cues here and there and forgot a line every once in a while. But overall, the two-act show was a diamond in the rough and was full of funny one-liners pulled off by a number of well-written characters. Central to the show is the principal of Public School Maximum Security, Ms. Bianca Ranchwear, played by Lindsay Seeley. A maniacal, self-styled Fascist school administrator, Ranchwear keeps her students captive while she makes money on the side by selling school supplies that never make it into the classrooms. The school’s students eventually strike back at their principal, starting a revolt that sends the principal to the insane asylum and the students back to their rightful schools. The play’s humor starts early and peppers every scene. At one point, a revolution-minded student says he is going to break out of the school.With what? asks another student. Pimples?The production is big in terms of talent, with 27 drama students playing roles. Those students played in another production just one week ago, Final Dress Rehearsal, a comedy about the problems encountered by a high school drama troupe trying to prepare a play about Bigfoot.Fortunately for those who missed that show and Help! I’m Trapped in a High School, McInerney’s class will present two more shows next Friday. The first, which starts at 7 p.m. at the high school auditorium, is My Son is Crazy, But Promising, a farce about spies, writers, aliens, mobsters, crazy old ladies, buried treasure, and a $10 million lottery. At 8:30 p.m., the class will present their stage adaptation of the 1980s movie The Breakfast Club.Admission for the two plays is $3. Profits will go to benefit the high school’s drama department. “