Lights, camera, action! The Drama Department has kicked off this school year in full swing, already coordinating several productions and projects for the 2024-2025 school year.
The first project of the Drama Department is the annual fall production, called “Moon over Buffalo,” which is set to run from Nov. 22-23. It is an eight-person comedy set in 1953 about a theater in Buffalo, New York.
“For me, this is my favorite play that I’ve done so far,” senior and drama president Elio Isley said. “It’s a super funny show. I love being in it, I love the characters, and I love my character. It’s just a lot of fun.”
Isley plays Eileen, who is the “home wrecker” of the play and causes the main events of the story. Eileen sleeps with George, the main character of the play and a traveling actor in the theater. George is played by senior Elliott Orange. She falls pregnant afterwards, which causes George to get drunk during the run of his show, and causes problems for everyone else trying to make sure the show goes on.
Watching the show form from this initial plot into a full fledged production has been exciting for both Isley and senior Mia Smith, who plays George’s wife, Charlotte.
“Once we’re all off [script], we know our blocking, and we have some caution pieces, you can kind of see everything molding together,” Smith said. “I just love how that happens in every show.” Blocking refers to the precise positioning of actors during a play to facilitate its run.
“It’s kind of hard when you’re doing blocking and there’s just a script in your hand and you can’t really get into it, but once your lines are memorized and you’re able to actually build the scene and character, it’s just really exciting,” Isley said.
The second project for the drama department this year so far is their production of “The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf,” which will be performed for youth in late January or early February 2025. The production is still in its early stages, with actors working on the production once a week.
“Honestly, we’re not doing a lot right now,” junior Maddie Keating said, who plays the narrator. “Since the ‘Moon Over Buffalo’ play is going to [debut] in a month, [Brzovic]’s been focusing on that one a lot more than ours.”
Jeannie Brzovic is the veteran drama department instructor.
Through working in the children’s production, Keating has had the opportunity to push her acting to be more expressive.
“You have to be a lot bigger and have a lot more emotion. You have to portray everything on your face,” said Keating. “And I know theater in general is a lot bigger than movie or TV acting, but with children’s theater, you’re performing for children under the age of 11, so you have to be big to be entertaining.”
Although the children’s production has pushed Keating to expand her range of acting, it can pose a challenge for some actors who might find it intimidating.
“For the freshman, especially, it’s hard, because they’re new to high school. So being big and in front of everyone, like a whole class of 25-plus people can be really scary, so it’s a lot harder to push them to be bigger,” Keating said.
Both productions have faced challenges due to the new class structure of theater vs. the club structure from last school year.
“Normally people would audition in a show then get casted after that. But what’s been expected this year is that [Brzovic] already has a list of people to put in the play production class,” Isley said. “If people who aren’t in the class audition and they’re in, it becomes a big hassle and it’s not how it’s been run for 20 years, which makes it difficult for the teachers and students.”
“It was really hard, because we had to make this list of kids who were thinking about auditioning, but if they didn’t make it into the show, now they have this class they don’t really want to be in,” Smith said. “And if they don’t want to [be a] tech, then they don’t really have anything to do. But they’re still forced to go into this class because we had to make it in order to save our drama program.”
Inexperience in tech work has also come up as an issue in the production of both plays.
“The idea is that [Brzovic] is gonna make us tech [Moon over Buffalo], and them tech [The Trial of the Big Bad Wolf], except we haven’t really been taught how to tech. I’ve never been taught how to tech anything, and I’ve been in this program for three years. But at least I have some idea of what I’m doing,” Keating said. “The freshmen have no idea. They haven’t even been up in the tech booth… So I’m a bit worried.”
Despite these issues, the 2024-2025 school year has gone a lot smoother for theater compared to last year so far.
“Last year, [we had] a lot of fear of the budget cuts and losing our program, as well as social drama,” Isley said. “It was crazy last year, but we’re starting fresh this year.”
“We haven’t really had to worry too much about budget [this year], because we still have the money from last year from the Oscar party [fundraiser],” Smith said. The Oscar Watch Party was hosted by the drama club to celebrate Lily Gladstone, an alumna of the drama department, and her nomination for Best Actress at the Oscars in March last spring.
Theater has also seen a lot of new members, especially with freshmen.
“We’ve had a bunch of freshmen come in this year, so the drama club is even bigger than it was last year,” Smith said. “Last year, I could count on my fingers how many people were in that club.”
In addition to the two productions in progress, the drama department also has some tentative plans for future projects later in the school year.
One of these include selling singing telegrams for Christmas and Valentine’s Day at the winter Holiday Bazaar on Dec. 7. “We’ll have a list of songs prepared, then people can pay them out and we’ll go to people’s PASS classes and sing to people,” Isley said.
Another future project includes starting up an after-school choir club, in response to the vocal music program being cut during the 2022-2023 school year.
“It’s not super cemented right now,” Isley said. “It was just a thought that has come up a bit, but it will happen. We just don’t have a lot of information on it right now.”
Soon after the fall play and children’s production are done, the drama department will be working hard on creating the spring musical, which is a no-cuts musical. Anyone who’d like to live in the limelight is welcome to audition for a role and join theater.
