Upper Schoolers Wow Audience At Spring Awakening
“Please turn off your cell phones.”
Theatergoers have heard this refrain for years, but at St. Andrew’s Upper School’s recent production of Spring Awakening, audience members actually used their phones throughout the show to grapple with the show’s difficult themes in a new way. Inspired by techniques of Brazil’s Theatre of the Oppressed, director Rick Garcia’s addition to the show had audience members visit a dedicated website throughout touchpoints in the show. After certain scenes, the performance would pause and a question appeared on stage that dealt with a theme audiences had recently witnessed in the show. The questions revealed connections between the problems dealt with by the teenagers in Spring Awakening’s 19th-century Germany to the ones many teens struggle with today.
Spring Awakening explores difficult topics like sexuality, depression, and abuse. Led by a cast of talented young performers including Ethan Hanna, Will Snider, Eugenia de la Garza, Aislin Lyman, Teddy Gilman, and Shelby Pomeleo-Fowler, the show wove upbeat rock-inspired songs alongside melancholy ballads. The Upper Schoolers performed the musical from October 23 to October 28 -- many of the roles were double-cast to give as many talented actors and actresses the chance to shine as possible while also assuaging the stress of performing so many shows in a row.
For the past two years, Garcia and his team have cast every student who auditioned for a theater production. Garcia is grateful that he and his team have cultivated a theater program where so many students want to participate, but acknowledged the creativity needed in order to stage 49 performers in a script only written for 13. The scenic element of a turntable also presented some challenges to work through -- the cast and crew were only able to rent the turntable for 10 days. With such a limited rehearsal time, the cast was required to learn their dances and blocking on the moving floor on a much quicker timeline. The technician team enjoyed the opportunity to work firsthand on the mechanics and theatrics of this kind of device. By researching whether the stage would support the weight distribution of the turntable, our technicians experienced the intersection of art, math, and science.
So much goes into a St. Andrew’s theater production. From our performers to our technicians, production staff, and parent volunteers, everyone who takes part in a show plays a vital role in creating an immersive, exciting, and often emotional experience for their audience. Hats off to the entire cast and crew for another amazing show!
