The SJHHS theatrical production of Letters to Sala won 1st place at California State Educational Theatre Festival (CETA), which will allow the students to take the production on the road and perform in front of over 1500 people in January at the CETA Festival in Fullerton.
The performance was judged in three separate performances by professional adjudicators, and it’s the first time the Stallion Theatre Company will have a chance to perform on the CETA main stage.
Previously, the company had won first place for its show Metamorphoses in 2021. But Covid-19 restrictions shut down the entire CETA event and the actors were not able to perform it for the public.
This will be a first for Stallion Theater in that they won first place and will also be able to take the show on the road. The performance of Metamorphoses would have been particularly challenging because the set involved filling a 20 by 8 foot pool of water used throughout the play from which actors would emerge.
Letters to Sala presented its own unique challenges faced by the tech crew because it centers around the Holocaust.
“Because of the content in the show, the costumes and props crews needed to establish a comprehensive check-in and check-out process to ensure all Nazi armbands and Jewish stars were collected at the end of each night,” said lighting designer Owen Pasternak.
The armbands were simplified, with the swastika portion removed.
“The black box theater’s intimate setting also demands perfection of anything the audience views – there could be no mistakes in the painting technique used on the set,” he said.
To create a memorable and poignant experience for audiences, the company used its black box space instead of the bigger theater.
“We transformed it into a split setting between Sala’s family house in Poland and the apartment in New York during the 1980s. Stone pillars were created to represent portions of the labor camps and gravestones as memorabilia of those who were lost during the holocaust,” said Assistant Technical Director, Michael Naramore.
“Images were projected onto a screen behind the middle of the set where dates, time, locations, and people could be seen. The projector tied the whole story together visually along with the set, granting more context about where and when the story occurred,” said Naramore.
