Sarah Harrison
Staff Writer
Over the past 3 amazing years, I have been a active member of Mask & Zany. I’ve done many musicals and plays, and those were some of the best experiences of my high school career by far. There are a lot of people who come and see the shows, and see what we put together, but there aren’t a lot of people who see what goes on behind the scenes, and what really goes into putting these productions together so quickly, which is what I'm here to shed some light on the entire process of putting a show together. I ’ll start from the beginning. We start out with auditions. We all come in three days after school to do acting, singing, and dancing auditions if it’s a musical. For acting you usually need to have a one minute comedic monologue prepared, and you do it in front of the group, it’s a lot less scary than it sounds because Mask & Zany is like one big family. After acting auditions we have singing auditions. The type of song you do really depends on the musical that we’re doing, but it always has to be at least sixteen measures long. After singing auditions we have dancing auditions, which is always the most fun time. None of us are close to being professionals, so it’s just fun. After we have auditions the real waiting begins. We wait until the cast list comes out, which is always a suspense filled limbo period for everyone. After the list comes out we get to work.
In the first few rehearsals, we just all sit around in Mrs. Pittner’s room and read through our scripts, and listen to the soundtrack on Spotify. After those few days, we start learning our singing parts for the show with Mr. Bateman, and start blocking with Mrs. Pittner; which is learning the movement and what you do and where you stand on stage. After we have our basic blocking down, we try to start memorizing our lines which can be tough, but the key to learning anything is repetition, so going through it everyday in rehearsal helps. A few weeks in we start dance rehearsals. This year was especially challenging for a lot of us because we had to learn how to tap dance in just a few short weeks. We would have tap rehearsals everyday until we all got it down, even when a lot of us had little dance experience before hand. I’m not surprised because Mask & Zany people are some of the most dedicated and hardworking individuals I've ever met. When all of this is down, and we have everything memorized, we being to stumble through the show, and I mean stumble through. We stop and start constantly to call line, ask what our blocking is, or to fix a lighting cue, but it eventually comes together, it always does even when we think it won’t. Being a part of a production in Mask & Zany is one of the most magical and rewarding things ever. Seeing something that you pour your heart and soul into everyday for months, go from absolutely nothing to full blown production that you’re proud of and are excited to perform, is one of the greatest feeling ever.
I encourage anyone who is even the smallest amount interested in theater to try out for a show with us. Through the shows and Mask & Zany, I have met some of my closest friends, and being a part of a family like this is once in a lifetime. I know that I was scared and didn’t have a lot of information when I was a freshman, so if you have any questions or want to know any information about what to do for auditions, talk to anyone in the club, or reach out to Mrs. Pittner, she would be thrilled to hear from you. Come join Mask & Zany, we would love to have you!
