HANCOCK COUNTY — In mid-November, the Friday night lights turn from the sports fields to the stage where three of the four Hancock County high schools will present a full weekend of plays and musicals all open to the public.
Ghosts haunt performance of ‘A Christmas Carol’
The slow and ominous sound of a clock chiming. A single spotlight comes up on a figure standing atop the stairs. The black-shrouded apparition raises a white hand and points at another figure, clad in a night shirt and dressing gown. It’s judgment time for Ebenezer Scrooge and tech week for the Eastern Hancock High School drama club.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery
For her directorial debut, Kim Miller selected Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” which will play Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the auditorium at Eastern Hancock High School, 10320 E. County Road 250N in Charlottesville.
“It’s one of my favorites,” Miller said, “and I thought it would be a good show to incorporate a large cast to get them involved in drama.”
Junior Allison Kirklin waits backstage to go on as Mrs. Cratchit. Dressed in the traditional mop cap, long dress and apron, she watches the action on stage. Kirklin is appearing in her third production and her largest role to date at Eastern Hancock. In addition to Mrs. Cratchit, Kirklin plays a number of other small parts, including a guest at the Fezziwig party.
The large cast features 34 individual roles, played by 17 cast members.
Senior Dillen Boyer had been cast in three small parts before the unexpected happened: the lead — Ebenezer Scrooge — moved to another school.
Miller did some shuffling around and Boyer found herself cast as Ebenezer Scrooge.
According to her castmate Kirklin, it was perfect casting.
“She had played a villain before (Miss Minchin, the strict head mistress in “A Little Princess”),” Kirklin said. “The part was made for her.”
Miller looks forward to the audience’s response to a female Scrooge.
“It proves that Charles Dickens has created a universal role not specific to gender,” Miller said.
As for Boyer, her biggest challenge in playing Scrooge has been the costuming. She’s playing the role as a man, so she’ll be wearing men’s clothing.
“Nothing fits,” she grumbles. “All the clothes we have are too large because I’m smaller than most women.”
Boyer, Kirklin and the rest of the cast have been rehearsing four nights a week since the end of August and are eager to start their Christmas season a little early with their mid-November production of “A Christmas Carol.”
Tickets are $7 for students and $10 for adults at the box office before the show.
‘Dancin’ feet’ come to
Mt. Vernon High School
FORTVILLE — To wander backstage at the Mt. Vernon High School auditorium is to travel back in time: guys in gangster suits and fedoras; girls with bobbed hair, long satin gloves and sparkly dresses with fringe above the knee.
It’s 1933, and Peggy Sawyer from Allentown, Pennsylvania, has just stepped off the bus in the heart of New York City. She is in pursuit of her stardust dream: to make it big on the stage of the Great White Way.
Mt. Vernon Theatre presents “42nd Street” tonight, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at Mt. Vernon High School, 8112 N. County Road 200W.
The classic American musical tells the story of Peggy’s climb from chorus girl to Broadway star, how she catches the eye of the show’s director, Julian Marsh (played by senior Jason Crow) and faces the wrath of diva Dorothy Brock (Kaylee Johnson-Bradley) to become a star in her own right.
Director Lindsay Davis began working on “42nd Street” as Mt. Vernon Theatre’s fall production almost as soon as props and costumes from last spring’s “Thoroughly Modern Millie” were put away.
Davis knows her students and selected “42nd Street” with them in mind.
“I have a lot of trained dancers,” Davis said, “and it seemed like the right year.”
With the knowledge that “42nd Street” is a dance-heavy show, Davis offered private summer tap classes to anyone who might have an interest in auditioning once school started back up.
Senior Emily Thomas attended the summer workshops to learn the audition choreography and was rewarded with the lead role of Peggy Sawyer. On stage for 90 percent of the show, Thomas has lost track of the number of hours of tap class and rehearsals she’s attended.
In her fourth year as theater director at Mt. Vernon, Davis has a growing program on her hands. She attributes the growth to her approach to theater.
“If you have passion and energy and excitement for something, that passion can spread,” Davis said.
Working with a new team — Jackie Mason as orchestra director and Joy Mills as tech director — the last week of rehearsal is about timing and smoothing out the rough spots.
On stage, a barrage of sailor-suited guys and sequined gals — all in tap shoes — rush the floor and begin the tap routine for the title song: “42nd Street.” Davis barks out calls for spotlights on sailors and a slowing of the tempo for parts of the number.
Backstage Thomas and Crow discuss the relationship between their characters.
“Julian Marsh is an intimidating character,” Crow said. “He has no time for jokes; he gets stuff done.”
When asked whether Julian Marsh and Peggy Sawyer get together in the end, both actors seem stumped.
“It’s an open-ended question,” Crow admits.
One thing they both agree on is the message of the show.
“It’s about luck and believing in yourself,” Crow said.
“And the magic of theater,” Thomas adds. “Who knows? A little kid watching can be that Peggy Sawyer some day.”
Tickets are available for $10 for adults and $8 for students at mvhs.booktix.com.
‘Fiddler on the Roof’ offers up tradition
NEW PALESTINE — Abbey Landis is used to being old. Fresh from playing the Grandmama in last year’s “The Addams Family,” the high school senior is currently cast as Yente, the venerable gossipy matchmaker in New Palestine High School’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
“Dial down the crazy, but up on the strange,” Landis says of her character.
“Fiddler” tells the story of a family of Russian Jews living in Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. Teyve, his wife Golde and their five daughters struggle to eke out an existence in their little village of Anatevka, where many of the families have lived for centuries. They rely heavily on tradition, as the opening song says, to continue their way of life.
Landis as Yente spends most of the play trying to arrange marriages — as tradition dictates — for each of Tevye’s five daughters, with only moderate success. Father Tevye and Yente each struggle with changing times as arranged marriages fall through and daughters stray from family values into lives of their own.
Though the musical depicts events that happened more than 100 years ago — through songs such as “Tradition,” “Sunrise, Sunset” and “If I Were a Rich Man” — director Stephen Beebe reflects on the relevance of the story. As the story goes, Tevye and his family are eventually forced out of the village where they have lived for generations because they are Jews.
“It’s extremely timely,” Beebe said. “The prejudice, the fight between changing worlds and traditions and maintaining your identity as a person or people….you think we’d be past that by now.”
His son Mitchell Beebe, who plays the part of Tevye, understands the up-and-down nature of the show.
“It’s a roller coaster,” the younger Beebe said. “It starts happy and then goes down hill.”
The elder Beebe hopes to convey to his cast and to the audience the powerful and memorable experience of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
“It’s so important to understand people and culture and history,” he said, “and not to repeat.”
“Fiddler on the Roof” plays Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $8 for students and $10 for adults. Email [email protected] for more information.
