From the Director:
To our audience,
This has been an incredible journey! This time last year I was waiting to hear whether or not we'd been accepted into the JumpStart Theatre Program. We applied for this program because we sincerely believed that the students at Garrett needed an opportunity to explore Theatre. No matter what area, the Arts have always been a great place to learn how to express yourself, but Theatre holds a special quality that the others can't quite always reach. In Theatre you have to deeply examine not just the character you're playing, but also yourself. You have to, at times, blend the two together to accurately portray each character's motivations and desires. That requires emotional maturity. It requires introspection and empathy. That is the real reason we wanted to bring Theatre to Garrett. Our school--our community, at large--needs more people who are able to look past people's words and see what is really motivating them. That's how truly beneficial compromises are formed.
Once we secured our spot in the JumpStart Theatre Program, it was time to start planning for this year. I was only sure I would be able to get about 50 students at most to join the progam in it's first year, but to my great surprise I ended up with nearly 50 just in one class period! We got to work quick. We spent the entire first semester learning some basics of Theatre (how to position yourself on stage; what story can lights or costumes tell without any words; how to structure and write an effective, well-rounded story; etc.). The students jumped right in and came up with some truly entertaining and original content!
January finally came around and we hit the ground running with auditions for some, and choosing our Technical Theatre group for others. After the casting decisions were made it was time to really dig in and start learning the show. We learned all of the music in about a week and a half, while our Tech groups (lighting, sound, costumes and sets/props) got to work digging through the script and making plans for what we would need. The Tech groups were given full reign to design the show as they saw fit, and I only offered suggestions if something just wasn't working or wasn't possible. It took about another week and a half to learn all of the choreography, then we got straight into blocking the show. The students picked up everything so quickly that we were able to start doing full runs 2 days earlier than I planned for!
It has been an absolute honor and a privilege to be able to work with these amazing, talented, enthusiastic, GOOFY kids. I can't properly describe how proud I am of all of the work they've put into this show and how much they've grown over the course of the year. Building a Chorus program is hard enough, but balancing building a Theatre program on top of that has been insanity, and every second of the madness has been absolutely worth it to see the look on their faces when they start doing one of the dances for fun instead of practice. All I can say is a heartfelt, sincere thank you to all of you for supporting us, and most importantly to my amazing students.
- Mr. Furse
