To all our wonderful cast members, and families!
Words cannot adequately express, the joy that is in my heart because we were able to bring back theatre to our students, their families, and our school community in these very unprecedented times! I honestly thought we would not be able to do a live performance this year and the thought of my 8th graders going out without a show deeply saddened my heart! Then, the best day ever was when we when we found out we could do a show - but we would have to rethink the process and we did. I can’t thank everyone involved enough, especially the talented incredible ladies I do this with each year - Kiera Radvanski and Cherilyn Strand! Your hard work and dedication to our students and this program is unwavering even in Covid times!!!Everyone was beyond excited to do whatever it took to get it done!
Needless to say, this has been a challenging year for everyone in our world. But in our small world of SGS/HSC our cast, crew, parent volunteers, and alumni parents/cast members took the challenge and ran with it! We arrived at rehearsals on Saturday and took our temperature before entering, rehearsed masked, outside, and socially distanced inside, we built sets outside, and inside socially distancing, we rehearsed on zoom - dancing and singing in our homes, and organized our show to be livestreamed!! At times it was a bit overwhelming, but absolutely worth every minute of the safe process!
I firmly believe that kindness and acceptance is the music of the soul. When we really look past the silliness and slapstick comedy of the story,on the surface Shrek is reallly a show about acceptance and it tells a very relevant story about loving all people for who they are. The fairytale creatures are unique individuals and Fiona is still an ogre at the end of the show.But as Shrek so elegantly puts it, ”You are beautiful!” Eventhough she is green on the outside beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And they all lived happily ever after!
Every year our shows are a labor of love, but this year the love has been extra special as this was not easy on anyone. I cannot thank our parent producers Cara Holzer and Susan McCarthy enough for having to rethink our structure and creating online opportunities in lieu of our café of goodies, and digitalizing the playbill, and for arranging safe Saturday rehearsals and everything else to make this run smoothly for all. Another huge thanks to Bill Connell and Alyssa Chin for once again being our set construction heads and organizing our awesome parent volunteers (please look at each name under set crew, they all are rock stars) who helped to make sure the amazing set was built safely - outside and inside - and just making it happen in a short period of time! Super shout out to Sandra Garcia for taking on the storybook illustrations - stunning!! And thank you to Emily Russoniello for coming back and using her amazing artistic skills to beautify our sets. Heartfelt thanks to Dana La Selva for another year of creating and organizing awesome costumes with the helppful talents of Amy Rice and Laura Moley. You are all a magical force and I can't thank you enough for coming back in the spring when I know life is very busy! Jeff Maskal...you have been our stage manager from day one at SGS! I know when I am done directing, the show is in the best of hands. Thanks so much to Kim Darway for heading up advertising, Laura Freeman for coordinating kisses for the cast, and Nikkii Tatum for putting together our beautiful show bulletin Board. Incredible parent volunteers to say the least!
Alvin Jowers also gives his time and talent on the sound board once again…Thanks to Alvin and his expertise, all our students can be heard loud and clear. He also keeps us calm through each performance.
A huge thanks to our awesome alumni volunteers: Elle Lisner for her precise lighting cues, Cormac McCarthy, Molly Smith, and Stasha Holzer (7th grader) for being here on Saturdays to help in any way! A shout out to Anthony Francese, and Artistic Expressions, for your guidance and expertise in the art of livestreaming - without you we could not have done this! To my husband of 34 years - this was a crazy year - and I would not have wanted to be home for so long with anyone else. Thank you for your constant support in my theatrical endeavors!!
