Stage over Snow

Freshly fallen powder, mostly sunny horizons, beautiful West Coast mountains, and, of course, delicious beavertails were just a few of the highlights of Brentwood’s ski day. Most of the school woke at the ungodly hour of 5am last Wednesday morning to partake in this annual trek to Mount Washington. That is, unless, of course, they’re a Musical kid. I personally never had the chance to go on school ski day, or any Sunday ski trip, in fact, due to my lifer status—lifer meaning being in musical for at least 3 years (5 in my case)—in Brentwood’s superb (yet time-consuming) Musical Theatre program. Don’t get me wrong, Sunday rehearsals can be a lot of fun, as is our all-day ski day rehearsal. Not to mention that our shows would be nowhere near the caliber that they are without them; they are a truly necessary part of the process. This year, our musical project is The Addams Family. The Musical cast was treated to a modestly early breakfast at 7:30am before rehearsal was to start at 8:30am. We began with a review of the last scene and musical number before we moved on to a cue to cue of the whole show, which is simply just the beginnings and endings of each scene for the sake of set changes and understanding the continuity and fluidity of the show. Our seamstress, the wonderful and immensely talented Sally Smith, was busy having students try on costumes, discovering what alterations needed to happen as well as what costume pieces were still needing to be made, found, or bought. So far the costumes look delightful, and will certainly pull the show together as they are integrated into rehearsals. After a quick break for brunch-style lunch, it was on to the run-through. Ski day rehearsal is often the first time the show gets run in full in the right order, and this ski day was no different. It was really nice to see the show come together into a cohesive production as opposed to snippets and fragments. Notes from the run were given out the next day, and, of course, there are many things to tweak, but in comparison to other years, I’d say that we’re quite well positioned to get ourselves polished and practiced for our run of the show which is taking place the first week of March. Substantial progress has already been made in the week following our intense all-day rehearsal and the whole cast is responding really well to feedback from Mrs. Widenmaier, Mr. Newns, and Ms. Blake—our director, music director, and choreographer respectively—and we are constantly improving. Mr. Armitage—our tech/lighting/sound/production expert—and his Theatre Production class/crew are also starting to become more involved as they are an integral part of the production and are insanely important for this show to succeed. Looking forward to opening night, Jaclyn C, Alex ’16, Captain of Musical