Geneva High School’s annual fall play is around the corner from its debut weekend, and the cast and crew have worked hard to make sure the two-story show, ‘The Marvel Spotlight,’ opens on the auditorium stage smoothly.
“It’s two one-act plays that are each about 45 minutes long,” junior and lead actor, Quinn Beier said.
The play’s division has not stopped the actors or backstage crew from perfecting the two pieces, ‘Squirrel Girl Goes to College’ and ‘Hammered: a Thor and Loki Play,’ that will be put on from November 17th to the 19th. With the days leading up to the shows, the performers attend “tech week” after school each day to rehearse both shows over and over.
“Tech Week is a week, and the rehearsals are long,” senior and head sound manager, Olivia Reich said. “We don’t really know exactly when they’re going to end, but usually they end pretty late.”
Tech week is utilized by both tech and actors to connect their production groups and unify their attributions, especially for the unique style of the 2023 play.
“We are here from 3:00 to 8:00 or 3:00 to 9:00 and we pretty much just run the show endlessly, so tech has a chance to figure out everything that they’re doing,” Beier said.
While the actors practice their performances, Reich and the rest of the crew have a chance to formulate cues that manage the lights, sounds, and rigging systems during the play.
“I will write [the cues] down in my own script. If there’s a sound effect or if I need to bring somebody’s microphone up, I know exactly where in the script to do it,” she said.
With lots of practice, the two show groups work together to blend the weeks of preparing together.
“We started after the underclassmen show, so we’ve been going since October 10th,” theatrical director, Olivia Frullani said.
The preparation of the set includes both the set pieces (structures that the actors can walk and talk on) but also props and background objects listed for the shows, like the books and bedding for Squirrel Girl’s bedroom.
“We look at the script [for the set],” Reich said. “We get some freedom of choice when it comes to paint colors and things like that, but we can’t really do anything outside of this.”
While backstage crew prepared the predetermined props in the weeks leading up to the November show date, Beier and the rest of the actors were hard at work learning the lines and, occasionally, the songs.
“It’s not a musical, but there is a school chorus singing Squirrel girls theme song,” he said.
With all of the effort put in before the shows, both the actors and the crew alike have traditions to celebrate afterward.
“We have a couple of traditions,” Reich said. “We have the underclassmen laps, so after every show usually the first show of a production we have the underclassmen run around the auditorium in big loop and we play music from the sound speaker. Then we all do Cotton Eyed Joe on the stage.”
While the two different groups have their separate rituals, they come together after the final play on Sunday to do one together.
“We have a tradition called ‘I believe’ and it’s a chant at the end of every show,” Beier said.
The senior thespians give a speech before leading the production cast in a call and response, ending the fall season with the cast and crew united.
After the play, the theater department hopes to continue its streak of solid productions with a Titanic adaptation as the fall season comes to a close.
