Peforming Arts Center Activites

Sean and Liv compile some general information and current events on the groups that live in GPHS' Performing Arts Center, as well as some more specific info about the groups they specialize in.

Performing Arts Center Updates

By Sean Glover & Liv Akers

Marching Band

The Grants Pass High School Marching Band is back for their first real season since the pandemic! There were four competitions this year:

Pride of the Northwest (hosted by Grants Pass, here on home turf!)
Sunset Classic (hosted by Sunset High School in Beaverton, Oregon)
Century Showcase (hosted by Century High School at Hillsboro Stadium in Hillsboro, Oregon)
Sherwood Fall Showcase / NWAPA Championships (hosted by Sherwood High School in Sherwood, Oregon)

After Championships, photographed by Jennifer Pendleton

For those who have never been to a band competition before, here is a quick run down. Schools from all over the state (and sometimes from Washington!) come down to one stadium to play a show they have spent at least a few months preparing. There is a preliminary round, where every band competes and is ranked among their individual class. The classes range from Single A, which is for the smallest bands, to AAAA (pronounced Four A), which is for the biggest bands, including GP. There are also caption awards for each class, which include categories like High Visual, High Music, and High Auxiliary. The specific caption awards available vary by competition. After that, most of the bands return for the finals round that night to perform again, where classes are no longer considered and the champions of the competition are decided.

Some elements to note about this season:

There is no percussion judge! Normally, there is a caption award for High Percussion, but this season, NWAPA does not have a judge that specializes in percussion, so that award will not be available.
Sometimes, at competitions with a lot of bands present, the bands with the lowest scores after prelims will be eliminated from the finals round. Not enough bands participated this year for that to be an issue, so every single band had the opportunity to compete for a final score and placement.

*Tiny side note: NWAPA = Northwest Association for Performing Arts. Essentially, they are the group that runs the band circuit, which means they complete tasks like scheduling competitions and delegating scoring parameters.

Pride of the Northwest: Our first competition was a smash hit! Because we were hosting, GP did not compete, but we DID perform, and it was awesome to perform for our home crowd. Nine bands attended, and West Salem took home our first place trophy in finals. This year is a little different, because West Salem is usually our top competitor, but this year, they are only in class AAA. This means we compete with them in finals, but in prelims, they are not part of our competition, which feels quite strange. Some other things to note:

Douglas High School, in the A class, competed for the first time EVER at PNW, and they were amazing! They came out on top of their class and placed third in finals.
St. Helens High School came all the way down from Washington to compete. Grants Pass students were excited to host a band from so far away. They will definitely be welcome in GP in the years to come.

Behind-the-scenes: Hosting a competition is a whole different challenge from attending. Students welcomed bands and greeted them upon arrival, and worked other jobs as well, like selling concessions and helping with cleanup. If you ever attend a competition, remember to thank the employees!

Click here for some pictures from the event!

During the Championships performance, photographed by Jennifer Pendleton

Sunset Classic: Grants Pass attends this competition every year, and it is normally hosted in Hillsboro stadium, but this year, it was hosted at Sunset High School in Beaverton, just outside of Portland. Nine bands attended, and it was a five-hour bus ride both ways for our team. GP won prelims, but placed second in finals to Kamiak High School, with a score of 86.43 points, losing by just 0.1 points! Quite frankly, these results were well-deserved, because Kamiak’s concept was cohesive and their visuals were clean, and now we have a better idea of our competition for next time. Some notable performances were, of course, Kamiak, with their casual uniforms (they wore matching Converse instead of marching shoes, and ball caps instead of shakos), and Century High School, with their elaborate galaxy-themed props.

During the Championships performance, photographed by Jennifer Pendleton

Century Showcase: Hosted at Hillsboro stadium (my personal favorite competition venue!), Century Showcase had a turnout of 14 bands. Grants Pass was the only AAAA band that attended, so we took all the prelims awards, but in finals, we placed first with a score of 87.45. The top four bands in finals (Grants Pass, Sherwood, Mountainside, and West Salem, in that order) ranked within a point of each other, so, needless to say, it was INSANELY close. We got to see some bands we had not seen this season yet, including Glencoe, ranked Single A this year, which scored so high in prelims that they would have placed second in the class above them. We got a closer look at Century’s show, which featured a giant inflatable moon, and since they were hosting, they could do a bunch of extra fancy stuff, so they dimmed the lights in finals and showcased some fancy LED’s on their props.

Sherwood Fall Showcase / Championships: The first big thing to note about championships this year is that it was split up. A and AA have a separate championships competition, where they compete amongst themselves, and Grants Pass attended the AAA and AAAA championships. Normally, championships take place in the University of Oregon’s Autzen Stadium, but due to certain COVID protocols at the university, they cannot host any high school bands. No other stadium is big enough to host every band in the circuit, so the circuit was split up.

Five AAA bands and four AAAA bands attended the competition. There were no awards given for prelims, but the finals performance lineup was announced according to placement, which had Grants Pass in second to Kamiak. Later, we learned we placed fourth or fifth in all of the captions. In finals, though, Grants Pass swept the caption awards and won with a score of 91.10! Kamiak came second with a score of 89.90, followed by Century, and then Roseburg. In AAA, West Salem came out on top, with a score of 87.30 (which would have placed them in third in AAAA), followed by Mountainside, Sherwood, Westview, and Sheldon, in that order.

Grants Pass celebrated the win after finals awards were given by taking over the field for a mini-dance party. Mr. Norfleet played “Thriller” on a speaker and we all celebrated and got pictures with our friends and family, but we eventually had to leave, so we packed up and headed home.

During Championships finals awards, photographed by Jennifer Pendleton

Overall, the season was an absolute success, and considering how many members were untrained and disoriented due to not having a season last year, it could not have been more successful. Personally, as a section leader, I am incredibly proud of how far my section has come, and as a senior, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end my high school marching band career.

For more specifics on points for each competition, click here for the official NWAPA site, which has prelims and finals records for every competition in the circuit.

"Mama Will Provide" Ensemble from Musical "REVIEW"ing the Situation!

Theatre

Join Thespian Troupe 2354 here at GPHS for their production of All Together Now! sponsored through MTI (Music Theatre International). MTI handles the rights of usage for a huge majority of musicals. This organization has offered to schools, who are currently struggling in the midst of the pandemic, to put on a full-fledged, free-of-charge review of show tunes compiled from a series of popular Broadway musicals.

MTI states, as directly described from their website, “The revue features 15 slots for musical performances with multiple song options per slot, so theatres have flexibility with how they present the show. The option to choose from two or three fantastic songs for each slot allows producers to tailor the show to best fit their artistic/creative vision, the talents of their cast, and the composition of their audience.” These songs include: “We’re All In This Together” from High School Musical, “Pure Imagination” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, “Seasons of Love” from Rent, and “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from Mary Poppins.

Last year, the theatre department put on three different shows, which consisted of An Evening of Ten-Minute Plays, Ghosts In The Machine, and Musical “REVIEW”ing the Situation! All three of these were low-budget productions-- the department conjuring up anything they could with the dwindling budget from the abrupt end of the 2020 school year and cancellation of WORKING: The Musical. With not as much money to pour into this production as opposed to ones in the days before COVID-19, All Together Now! will be used as a fundraiser for Thespian Troupe 2354, contributing to the troupe’s annual activities and future productions. Events that the troupe normally fundraises for and are also doing so this year are Regionals Acting Competition, State Thespian Festival, International Thespian Festival, Thespian Awards Banquet, the Experimental Productions play, and the upcoming spring play. Any amount of contribution to the troupe matters, so please be sure to attend and support us through All Together Now!

"Women and Sandwiches" Ensemble from Musical "REVIEW"ing the Situation!

All Together Now! will be performed at the Performing Arts Center on November 12th and 13th at 7:00 PM and November 14th at 2:00 PM. The admission price is undetermined at this time, but posters and flyers will be publicized very soon and will note any additional information that is vital to audience attendance, fees, and COVID-19 regulations and restrictions. The show spans about an hour, only including fifteen songs in the queue for the evening. So if you were concerned about not having enough time to catch the game after your kid’s performance, not to worry. You’ll probably only miss the first quarter (which we can determine will mostly be advertisements anyway).

Official MTI-sponsored All Together Now! banner

Acting as a tool to help rebuild theatre within our community, All Together Now! will include several other theatre companies present in Grants Pass. These particular companies have been active throughout the pandemic or have taken a break because of space and funding issues. Along with GPHS Theatre Department’s contributions, One Eleven Theatre Company, Rogue Music Theatre, and Heartland Dance Studio have also taken a few of the numbers under their belt to master and perform by mid-November.

The creative team has been hard at work, creating a product for the public in less than a month’s time, so recognition will be presented where recognition is due. Julia Cuppy, the new theatre teacher at GPHS, is the director of the musical revue. Jocelyn Schmidt is the choreographer for all of the high school’s primary numbers, and Joanna Pitzak acts as both the musical director and blocking director for the high-school-performed numbers. Aniko LaFrance-Hernandez stage-manages the show. Additional assistance includes the set and projection designer, Wayd Drake, and the lighting designer, Clyde Highbarger.

With theatre starting to revive in our community to pre-pandemic levels, hope and joy are really starting to reinstate themselves into those who love being involved with the performing arts and holding out beyond the harbingers of COVID-19.

Orchestra

According to our sources (big thank you to Justin Vinyard!), orchestra’s season has not quite picked up yet, but here is what you can look forward to this month.

November 6th: There will be a chamber orchestra competition at the University of Oregon. There are no spectators allowed, but it will be adjudicated. The orchestra is planning on performing pieces entitled This Is Halloween, Darkened Shadows, and Villa-Lobas.

November 6th and 7th: The Youth Symphony of Southern Oregon will be performing Peer Gynt Suite No.1, Mozart’s Symphony No. 29, and many more. On the sixth, they will perform at the Craterian Theater in Medford at 7:00 pm, and the performance on the seventh is at the Music Recital Hall at Southern Oregon University at 3:00 pm.

*NOTE: For both performances, attendees must provide proof of full COVID-19 vaccination completed at least 14 days prior to the performance, OR provide a negative PCR COVID-19 test taken within 48 hours of the concert.

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