This month, on the 24th, 25th, and 26th, drama will set the stage for Broadway Night, a new production that fuses three different plays into one musical spectacular.
Alexis MacAdam and Teryn Gray, producers for Broadway Night, are both very excited for the new production. “We’re taking three shows: Sweeney Todd, Little Women, and HMS Pinafore and condensing them to a half hour for HMS Pinafore and Little Women and Sweeney Todd to an hour,” MacAdam said.
These bold stories are all set in the 1800s, but each of them have unique plots. Gray explained Sweeney Todd as a story about a wrongly convicted man who is separated from his family and later returns to seek vengeance and “meets a Mrs. Lovett along the way who decides that chopping up your victims and putting them in my meat pies will make a really good business.”
Little Women follows the journey of a girl named Joe who is searching for her independence. “She wants to be a writer and everyone else thinks that she should be a lady and marry so she’s going against the ordinary.” Gray said. “HMS Pinafore is all about a ship, the sailors, the captain, and there is some romance. Our title for Broadway Night is Boats, Brides, and Meat Pies,” Gray said.
“We wanted to do a different kind of layout this year to try something new and to get more shows to branch out a little bit so Mrs. Silver suggested to do more than one show, but condensed. We liked the idea of choosing from shows that are interesting and would draw audiences and kind of involve our school more in the theater program and get a lot more students coming to see the shows,” MacAdam said.
Variety is not only present in the shows themselves, but the performers as well. Students from every class are present in the production, some new to drama others veteran players, and some of which are acting in one, two, or three of the shows.
One of the most impressive features of the SJHHS Drama Program is how the students have learned to manage the bulk of the production on their own.
The goal Everything in the show is run by students, including directing, tech, acting, and producing.
“The most exciting thing to see is the variations of all the student work with directing, tech, acting, and producing the whole thing because it’s all run by students,” Gray said. “The goal of Broadway Night is to be student run,” MacAdam said. “Mrs. Silver is just overseeing it all and facilitating and helping us all when we need help and teaching us to do these jobs on our own.”
Mrs. Silver says that she doesn’t really have to teach her students, but that “we provide really great experiences where they can take huge risks and really fail and fall on their faces. It’s through that falling that they learn resilience and how to pick yourselves up and make things happen.” Silver said her career is like “being an archeologist helping students find things within themselves.”
Alexis MacAdam and Teryn Gray, producers for Broadway Night, are both very excited for the new production. “We’re taking three shows: Sweeney Todd, Little Women, and HMS Pinafore and condensing them to a half hour for HMS Pinafore and Little Women and Sweeney Todd to an hour,” MacAdam said.
These bold stories are all set in the 1800s, but each of them have unique plots. Gray explained Sweeney Todd as a story about a wrongly convicted man who is separated from his family and later returns to seek vengeance and “meets a Mrs. Lovett along the way who decides that chopping up your victims and putting them in my meat pies will make a really good business.”
Little Women follows the journey of a girl named Joe who is searching for her independence. “She wants to be a writer and everyone else thinks that she should be a lady and marry so she’s going against the ordinary.” Gray said. “HMS Pinafore is all about a ship, the sailors, the captain, and there is some romance. Our title for Broadway Night is Boats, Brides, and Meat Pies,” Gray said.
“We wanted to do a different kind of layout this year to try something new and to get more shows to branch out a little bit so Mrs. Silver suggested to do more than one show, but condensed. We liked the idea of choosing from shows that are interesting and would draw audiences and kind of involve our school more in the theater program and get a lot more students coming to see the shows,” MacAdam said.
Variety is not only present in the shows themselves, but the performers as well. Students from every class are present in the production, some new to drama others veteran players, and some of which are acting in one, two, or three of the shows.
One of the most impressive features of the SJHHS Drama Program is how the students have learned to manage the bulk of the production on their own.
The goal Everything in the show is run by students, including directing, tech, acting, and producing.
“The most exciting thing to see is the variations of all the student work with directing, tech, acting, and producing the whole thing because it’s all run by students,” Gray said. “The goal of Broadway Night is to be student run,” MacAdam said. “Mrs. Silver is just overseeing it all and facilitating and helping us all when we need help and teaching us to do these jobs on our own.”
Mrs. Silver says that she doesn’t really have to teach her students, but that “we provide really great experiences where they can take huge risks and really fail and fall on their faces. It’s through that falling that they learn resilience and how to pick yourselves up and make things happen.” Silver said her career is like “being an archeologist helping students find things within themselves.”
