Katie Cockerham (12), wearing both a smile and a headset while sitting in the wings, listened to laughter reverberating throughout the theater during the senior theatre performance of Into the Woods, May 5.
She was one of three student directors for the show and also the assistant stage manager. “I loved listening to the audience react and laugh at the parts that I directed,” Cockerham said. “I really wanted to be involved, but I’m definitely not a singer. I had a lot of fun assistant directing Beauty and the Beast, so I decided that I would apply to be a director for Into the Woods too.”
Working alongside her as the show’s other two directors were David Azcona (12) and Agosto Villalva (12). The trio found that being able to divide up scenes made the workload more manageable, but it also came with its challenges.
The first of these issues involved their separate interpretations of how a staged reading is produced, which is what the show was meant to be.
“Usually, when [staged readings] are done, it has everyone in the back, on chairs, set up in rows.” Azcona said. “There are a couple music stands at the front and there is not much blocking at all, [which means there was] not much dancing or anything. Actors just move from Stand A to Stand B. But [the other directors] just kinda looked at me and I could tell that they didn’t like it. So by day one, the first meeting, we all wanted a different thing.”
The group decided to start blocking the show as if it was a full-fledged show: intricately. However, this normally takes a very long time and they were on a crunch, so by the time the show was only a couple weeks out, they had yet to start Act 2.
A prevalent issue was that they had to adapt to Beauty and the Beast and One Acts rehearsals; they only had after 6 P.M. most nights.
“Sometimes it was really difficult to get everyone at one place at one time,” Cockerham said. “We had to have late and weird rehearsal times to work around other productions and lots of people had work or other obligations. So sometimes we had to block scenes without certain characters even there.”
The cast agreed that the production needed to be scaled back significantly, and so the chairs and music stands were introduced to bring back the staged reading format. It wasn’t one specific actor that proposed this; they had all been thinking it, and decided to bring it to the directors as a group.
“A lot of [directing] is listening to the actors,”Azcona said. “Every time I’d block a scene I’d ask them if it was doable or needed to be scaled back or anything, and a lot of times they’d ask for it to be adjusted, so I would. It is more important for the actors to feel comfortable and prepared doing what they’re doing than for me to have some visual spectacle.”
Villalva treasured the collaborative aspect as well.
“I enjoyed seeing the actors do most of the work at some point,” Villalva said. “You can try giving them your own direction, but the reality is that some of these actors have been onstage for four years, and their instincts are going to carry the scene further than your ideas ever can. I think that’s what made the senior show really work too, [because] everyone is just flexing the muscles that they’ve been training for so long.”
This process emphasizes the aims of the entire show: to allow the students to take charge and to bring the group together, since it was entirely student-run.
The initial idea for the staged reading stemmed from the WVTC Council, which is composed of seniors. From there, they brought it up to the company’s director and producer, Robert Townsend, who approved it. The council was tasked with procuring the rights and funding, and after that, it was turned over to the students.
Parents of the seniors contributed both money and supervision to help the show come to life. However, they raised way more money than necessary, so coupled with the ticket revenue, the council was presented with a decision.
“Council all decided we wanted to give a gift to the theatre company moving forward,” Azcona, who serves as the vice president of the council, said. “We wanted to do something important with this money and give back to the community.”.
Townsend had wanted to add lockers into the theater space in order to help with organization for actors during the show, so the group chose to put the profits towards those.
Council presented this gift to the company following bows at the end of the show, and WVTC’s Junior Council then gave all the seniors roses as a sign of appreciation.
For the finale of the show, Azcona wanted to emphasize the unity everyone strived for.
“I wanted [the actors] to pick up the chairs and move them off stage, then pick up the stands, and all move down to the front and end the show in one big line,” Azcona said. “Others suggested that some characters bow individually, but I said “no” and that everyone should bow together in one big bow, because that’s what this show was about: giving everyone an equal opportunity and everybody having fun together.”