Blog

March 23, 2023.

Welcome back, Thespians! Our period of blog inactivity has ended since both our Spring Musical and Drama Production shows are well underway! 

First, let’s talk about the past few months! We partnered with the Music Department for our annual Cabaret Night, a prepared talent show of sorts comprised of various songs and scenes! Emcees Hailey Armentrout and Molly Garot dazzled the crowd with jokes and stories, and still get recognized in public by eager parents and their embarrassed student! We started the night with a group number from Mean Girls but with a personal Thespian spin, and our closing number was a combined Into the Woods medley with beautiful live instrumentals, enchanting vocals, and Siers’ outstanding choreography! 

In troop news, we’ve had a fun second semester thus far! Just a few weekends ago, we hosted Thespian Laser Tag – the red team versus the blue team – Thespian versus Thespian – who will come out on top? (Usually it was the seven year old stranger who somehow snuck into the playing room with us…) 

We’ve also made friends! Our Thespian troop partnered with the Spanish National Honor Society and with the Robotics Team (separately) for crossover meetings or tour events, drawing parallels between our groups. 

The green room renovations are also in progress! Your officers have been hard at work ordering appliances, building furniture, sticking up wall decals, taking down said wall decals, painting said wall decals, and, possibly most notably, transporting boatloads of to-be-discarded books into the trunk of Hailey’s car using towels when our cardboard box broke. It was not a glamorous time. But the green room is sure to be glamorous looking once we wrap up our renovation! 

And now, what you’re all really here for: our current productions! 

We are in the weeds of tech week for the Spongebob Musical, so I suppose it would be more fitting to say we’re in the seaweeds of tech week! (Please laugh. I try.) A wild spectacular of bright colors, dazzling costumes, and songs written by some of your favorite artists (including Cyndi Lauper, Panic! At the Disco, the Plain White T’s, and John Legend), there are still tickets available and it’s not a production to miss! Mila Ellis (Mrs. Puff, ‘24) says that her favorite part of the production thus far has been “rehearsing the wild dances in the lobby” – and I can confirm – the dances are truly wild! With tap numbers and flips and intricate movements, it’s not been easy, but it’ll sure be impressive. Mary Grenda (ASM, ‘25) enjoys helping the construction team build the set, a colorful shipwreck with a working porthole and soon-to-be-installed ladder. We even have our own Mt. Humongous, which lives up to its name – it really is humongous! Don’t miss your chance to see Spongebob, Sandy, and Patrick convince a town of sea creatures to leave it up to a sponge, squirrel, and seastar to prevent their town from being blown into oblivion – you’d trust them, right? 

Later in our season comes the Queen’s Guard, our Drama Production show! Taking place in the 1600s, scarlet fever riddled sisters recover by letting their imaginations run free when given a chess board. We follow a group of playing pieces and their journey to save their new king. It’s a show that both entertains and makes you think! Taylor Rohrbaugh (Frances/Publicity Manager, ‘25) particularly loves getting to spend time with her friends as they prepare for the show. Fun fact – a majority of the cast are sophomores, so it’s a great opportunity to watch our up-and-coming underclassmen sparkle on stage! We can’t wait to see where they go! Stay tuned for information on ticket sales. 

Well, thanks for reading to the bottom! We hope to see you in or at our upcoming productions and end-of-year banquet! The year is wrapping up, but we still have lots of fun in store! Keep dazzling, Thespians! 

Written by Ava Welcher

December 16, 2022.

As the semester draws to a close, there’s no better time than now to recap the last few months! Our Fall After School Show, The Play That Goes Wrong, was a huge success. After selling out of closing night tickets within just FOUR minutes, we added an extra show and eagerly anticipated opening the play. The audience loved watching the prop mishaps, falling walls, and sound effect errors. The fights between characters Sandra and Annie were met with roaring laughter and applause, and gasps when Sandra threw a glass vase at Annie’s head! (Inside secret: it was made of sugar glass, so it was completely safe on set, but was so fragile that part of the vase broke off just before closing night!) For a show meant to go so wrong, it went remarkably right and we left with amazing memories. 

But just fourteen days later, our theater space transformed from a 1920s manor house to a time-fluid nursery, paralleling nostalgic scenes of Neverland, for Advanced Drama Honors’ Lost Girl. With such a poetic script, a lot of creativity was left up to the technical designers. Between elegant costumes, personal childhood props, and the difficult lighting task of making ‘time fragment into a million pieces’ and ‘an atmosphere of glass,’ Lost Girl was no easy endeavor, but with energetic audiences and amazing feedback, as we took our final bow on closing night, we were all proud of what we’d achieved. 

About a month later, it was Acting One’s turn for their Original One Act Festival, original plays written, produced, and acted in by our beginning acting students. From hilariously written romantic mix-ups to an airline debacle, literal star-crossed lovers on a small-town farm to pun-filled detectives bickering about the body, the shows were impressive and entertaining. We have a lot of rising stars in Acting One this year! 

We’ve been busy with shows, clearly, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have time for other fun! We enjoyed a Noises Off movie night in celebration of TPTGW (and even got a complimentary mariachi band performance down the street), as well as a holiday cookie decorating party just this month! Dozens of Thespians came out to Thespi-giving, where we shared what we were grateful for over mac and cheese and apple pie. The general consensus was that we’re grateful for each other and our amazing Thespians community! Our club also hosted a Homeroom Olympics Can drive, where SDA homerooms collectively donated over 200 cans! Speaking of Homeroom Olympics, our very own Theatre Homeroom won the Fashion Show event, where we dressed up as the Peanuts characters, which also happened to be the Thespian Officer Halloween costume this year! (Siers made an excellent Snoopy.) Now, we’re in first place for Homeroom Olympics! Additionally, your Thespian Officers have been hard at work renovating our green room… 

We’ve achieved so much this semester! Our shows have been amazing and our events have reached so many people. We can’t wait to see all that our talented Thespians achieve in the second half of the school year. Have a safe and happy Winter Break! We’ll see you next semester for Musical and Drama Production! 

Written by Ava Welcher