Westerville North’s Theatre program is putting on Alice in Wonderland as their winter show. The play opened on Thursday, December 4 at 7:00 pm and closed December 6.
In her second year as the director of the theatre program, Katie Breslin says, “I try to find shows that I think the students will enjoy, that the greater Westerville Community will enjoy.” She also notes that the winter show is typically more family friendly.
Rehearsals were five days a week, after school as late as 9 p.m. the week before opening night. During these rehearsals, Breslin is blocking. This means she is directing the actor’s basic movements and giving them their places on stage. However, Breslin says, “I try to leave it pretty free for them to interpret beyond that.”
According to the Educational Theater Association, Over 2.4 million students have been inducted into the international thespian society.
One of the students in Troupe 3156 is Sydney Caney (2027) and she lead the cast of Alice in Wonderland. Caney got involved in theater through her brother and and has been learning the process as she goes. She decided to audition for the role of Alice because, “I thought it was really fun and it seemed more challenging than roles I’ve had in the past,” she said.
Caney said that she was not really expecting to get the role of Alice. As the lead, Caney is the only actor at rehearsal five days a week. As overwhelming as this schedule can be, Caney dealt with the stress by sleeping, and doing more homework at her house than she would be if she wasn’t the lead.
The theatre program is given a budget for the whole year, with the spring musical using more than the other productions because usually more students are involved. Part of that budget goes to the costume designers, Audra Hauff and Rachelle Dicus. Hauff, whose kids went through the theatre program and graduated from North, is doing her eighth show as costume designer.
The costume designing typically starts with the director, Breslin, giving Hauff and Dicus a Pinterest board of her vision for the costumes.
Hauff and Dicus have 52 costumes to make for this show, and get most of their materials from Goodwill and Amazon due to their short time frame. Some of the costumes require multiple individual pieces to be put together, like the Queen of Hearts dress, for example.
Hauff says, “We’ve taken five dresses out of the closet and we’re frankensteining them together to make what we want it to look like.” It takes trial and error to figure out the costumes with Hauff saying [they’re] not sure its going to work out the way Breslin had envisioned it.
One of the other adults working behind the scenes is technical director Kristen Allison, who has had this role for five years and got her experience through her own high school theatre program. She was also a paid technical assistant for the theater department at Brown University. She is at rehearsal three days a week from 2-6 p.m., with most of the work being done the week leading up to opening night in what is called tech week.
During tech week, Allison is overseeing the designing of the lights and sound effects, building the set and making the costumes.
One of the students leading the tech crew is Josie Bartsch (2027), stage manager. Alice in Wonderland will be her very first show as stage manager. Prior to this role, Bartsch has been apart of tech crew, shift crew, and house managing. As stage manager, her job is to figure out stage cues, and direct the tech crew when they are supposed to bring certain props in. She is in charge of the lights sound, music and movement crews. On show nights, Bartsch is in the booth that controls the lights and sounds on stage, as well as overseeing the crew backstage.
Bartsch is also at rehearsal five days a week until 5:30 p.m. She says “the biggest conflict is school.” Further adding, “It’s a really time-consuming job and along with homework and other responsibilities of high school it can get really crazy.”
As director, Breslin wants students to “have a positive experience and connect with the other people in the show,” while also trying to teach students “about different aspects of theater and what’s important in the theater community.”
After the winter show, Senior Directed One Acts will take place January 22-24 and the Spring musical, Anything Goes, will be showing April 30 through May 3. A link to buy tickets for the shows can be found on the Westerville North Theater Boosters website.
