Two would-be actors read an ad from a dying millionaire searching for her long lost relatives Max and Steve.

The actors Leo and Jack decide to impersonate them. But the problem is — Max and Steve are girls.

This comedy produced by East Wake Academy’s drama class is called “Leading Ladies.”

The show ran May 9 and 10.

“It’s a hijinks,” said the director, Caroline Mendez. And it even gets trickier.

Rainey Wheeler and Mandi Howlette are cast as Leo and Jack, who then pretend to be girls. So you have it: Girls pretending to be boys pretending to be girls.

“We all have a lot of fun doing this together,” said Grace Ann Lester, a freshman who plays a grandmother, Florence. “And this is what I want to spend most of my time doing anyway.”

Lester wants to be an actress as an adult. It doesn’t matter if she’s acting on Broadway, film or in a small community theater “as long as I am acting and having fun doing it,” she said.

Senior Jesse Paynter, 18, doesn’t have any acting plans, but he’s enjoying playing a bad guy for a change.

“I’ve always played a good guy,” said Paynter. “Playing a bad guy is a new challenge. It’s been fun so far.”

He plans to join the U.S. Navy and work in avionic fueling or fuel jet fighter planes.

The set those actors needed was assembled just in time for dress rehearsal on Thursday. Mendez said the students painted the set in her classroom, then brought it to the gym for assembly.

Junior Katie Perry, 17, built the doors and door frames into a setting wall. Everyone on the stage crew painted the sets that Emily Phillips and Sara Caye Heuermann drew onto the stand-alone walls, which created the illusion of different rooms. Heuermann drew a moose on the back of one of the walls.

It’s a good rendering of a moose, but she said “it looks kind of like a schnauzer with horns, but I like it.”

Elizabeth Hazel Bynum, who plays the buffoon, Doc, has been in four other EWA plays. She said she likes to become a completely different person.

But she expects her life will get too busy for any more acting. She’s going to be a pre-med student at East Carolina University next year, on an equestrian team and pursuing her interest in photography.

“I always enjoy the students,” said Mendez. “I’m so fortunate to have so much awesome talent to work with.”