This spring Proctor High School is presenting Alice in Wonderland. With a play comes hard work, and not just by the actors. 

I am one of the people helping make all of the props with 12 other kids in the Set and Stage Design class. 

First we read the whole play and figured out what we needed for stable props and moving objects such as doors. We had to consider what we could reuse and what we had to order so that we didn't waste any time. Time was not on our side, with the play happening on April 12.

 “All of these kids are hard workers, especially Jarrett. He is a really hard worker, he acts like a leader and has shown that and he doesn't give up,” Teacher and Play Director Ms. Kutcher said.

Looking through the play, we had to determine every prop that we needed. Everything had to be perfect. 

“ I think this play is going to be better than the last play we had,” Kutcher said. 

Proctor has quite the reputation for hosting a lot of plays. In the recent past we hosted Legally Blonde and Addams Family. To create the set for Alice in Wonderland,  we began by looking at the old props from these plays to see what we could reuse and what we had to buy.  For example, Juniors Camdon Kimball and Kaden Dean took the tombstones from Addams Family and reformed them into rocks for a rock wall in Wonderland.

Other old props that we used were two spooky trees that we layered with white paint to make them stand out better. Then we added the Cheshire cat smile to one of the trees. 

There were four moveable panels that were already painted from the last play but we repainted them as a sunset for this one. We got plenty of cardboard from our teacher because she doesn’t throw out anything. 

We used the cardboard to make the playing cards for the soldiers and bushes. “I sketched the playing cards for the soldiers and painted them,” Senior Colin Minard said.

Our class has been given a lot of tools and responsibility. Making all of the props for the play was a tough job; everyone had to pitch in with ideas for the props or costumes.

“I did a lot of high detail prop work, including conceptual development,” Senior Colby Martin said. He sketched a giant sword for the executioner, among other things. 

 Sometimes someone's worst idea could morph into the best idea for prop design. Our workers had certain roles and jobs to get done.  Kaden Dean, Camdon Kimball, Isaiah Fernandez, Jayce Sheldrick had the job of painting and making the bushes and prop door as well as creating the rocks for the rock wall. Kaija LoCascio, Livea Flake-Felix, and Rosalie Parker were in charge of the flower pots, painting, and fabric making. 

Colin was our go-to-guy; he would pretty much do anything in the class, whether it’s drawing, painting etc. “I pretty much did whatever the teacher wanted me to do, like the backboards for the background of the play,” Colin said. 

The Set and Stage Design students have put in a lot of work, in a span of three short months.

 “ It's probably going to be better than any ordinary play… I think it's going to be better because of how many kids we had in our class,” Colby said.

The stage is set, now it's up to the actors, let the play begin.