It’s not every day that a high school puts on a stage show and gets honoured by the star of the original Film, but it did happen at North Bergen High School in New Jersey, USA on Friday last week. One can only imagine how the young stars of the stage adaptation of “Alien” felt at the time.

First of all, Ridley Scott, director of the original 1979 film “Alien,” apparently donated $5,000 (£3,841) to the high school to get them to do an encore performance. Then on top of that, Sigourney Weaver, the original Ellen Ripley in the film and its many sequels, attended said encore performance and even introduced the play to the no doubt elated audience.

Weaver also got to know every actor who hit the stage in this amazing adaptation titled simply “Alien: The Play.”

Stage adaptation of ‘Alien’ at North Bergen High School

Initially, the drama students had held various fundraisers to get the production going and had used second-hand and various recycled items to make their costumes. The Verge reports they had heard about the project being set up by the drama club in March this year. Apparently, the young actors’ performances were so good, some of the cast of the original film “Alien” got to hear about it. This led to Scott donating the money to get the encore performance up and running.

The film had never been adapted as a stage show before, so besides their excellent performance, it was also a great accomplishment on their part.

While initially the show was held in March, there is now a YouTube video of their new, encore performance doing the rounds, which is included below.

In the video, it shows the young actors doing their thing as the “Chestburster,” the “Space Jockey,” the “Xenomorph” and all, and the student who played the role of Harry Dean Stanton even did so in a totally relevant Hawaiian T-shirt.

The best part is that what took filmmakers an $11 million (£8.5 million) budget to put on the big screen, the high school’s drama club did an amazing job for very much less money from their fundraising schemes.

Listen to Sigourney Weaver introducing the encore performance here.

‘Ellen Ripley’ also appeared on ‘Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’

Bloody Disgusting reports that besides Sigourney Weaver’s amazing surprise appearance at the encore performance of the play, she also did a skit on the US TV show “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” reprising her famous role as Ripley and doing a spoof performance. In the spoof, a number of journalists have left the planet, including Samantha Bee herself, and there is only one hero who can save them all – Ellen Ripley herself. Have a chuckle at the spoof in the video below.

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