Students in theater only had four weeks to rehearse the fall show, “Paganini,” due to the short timeline created as a result of the challenging winter musical, “Into the Woods.” Many actors’ normal process for learning a part, building the sets and rehearsal schedules have drastically changed for this show, resulting in the actors relying on each other and their own time for this show.
“I have directed ‘Paganini’ before, and because I’m so familiar with the literature, it wasn’t going to require a lot of prep time on my end just to adapt the show to this particular group,” theater director Jami Sauls said. “I wanted to pick something that I already kind of had a vision for, rather than creating that vision, we shared that, and we were able to be more efficient.“
It is easier for students to rehearse and learn a show when the vision for the final product is already known, making “Paganini” an easy first choice for the fall show. However, this didn’t help actors overcome the difficulty of the short time period to rehearse before opening night.
“We just had rehearsals on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it was effective, because we were able to get a lot of work done,” Sauls said. “It was a good educational tool because they had homework assignments they were supposed to do during the week.”
With rehearsals being switched to all day on Saturdays rather than throughout the week, actors were expected to learn their lines and blocking throughout the week and would review in pairs or groups to ensure that they knew what they were doing and they could move on.
“It’s heightening stress levels for everybody because people are having to be a lot more serious about the show,” Paganini, played by senior Dayton Rose said. “Everyone is realizing that they need to work really hard, so they are trying a ton, and really making people focus. ”
Many of the actors and tech students have come in on their own time or managed their time better to ensure that everything was done so that the show was able to run smoothly on opening night within the designated timeline.
“A lot of the people are coming in every morning and staying after school to work on the set and some are being done during class,” junior Ryan Kmaya, stage manager, said.
To ensure that the show gets performance ready before opening night, actors and tech students have stepped up to ensure that everything gets done.
“I came to the tech building every day that they happened so I helped out with a lot of the set, which is out of my wheelhouse,” Rose said. “I really enjoyed it and we got the set built a little faster than normal.”
Overall, the actors, students, and directors have put in a lot of extra effort to ensure that the fall show was ready by opening night by adapting the show process.
“I am excited to see the show happen because we have a lot of talented actors and actresses,” Kmaya said. “This was one of the first shows I watched, so being able to stage manage it was one of my favorite parts.”
