Over the past few months, Drama 4 Honors students Kat Aldrete, Chloe Mantle and Rylee Stanton showcased the culmination of their productions in the Thermond Drama Center. The plays were “Morning Sun” on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, “Sylvia” on Feb. 7 and 8 and “146 Point Flame” on March 7 and 8. For their capstone project, each senior directed a play and oversaw the entire process of auditions, castings and rehearsals.
Aldrete directs the tragic heart-wrencher “Morning Sun”
“Am I safe? Am I safe?” The opening sobs and violent shudders belong to Charley McBride, the young single mother that “Morning Sun” revolves around. Written by Simon Stephens, the emotional play was directed by Aldrete, documenting the pride and regrets of McBride’s laborious journey through life. Beginning with her final breaths, the play is a series of flashbacks and snapshots through which the audience relives and reflects on her life.
One of the most moving parts for Aldrete was the scene in which McBride talks to her father’s ghost, longing for his companionship and return to the mortal world.
“I have a really close relationship with my dad, so thinking about that and inserting myself into that position hits me really hard,” Aldrete said.
Aldrete says one reason she chose “Morning Sun” was its ability to recount and transform the intricacies of a seemingly normal main character’s life.
“I liked that it told a story about a really ordinary person, but it turns that person’s life into something extraordinary and special — something that you want to hear about,” Aldrete said. “Charlie is not really a special person, but the way that they highlight her and her relationships make her a special person. People connect with it on a personal level.”
“No matter what you accomplished when you were alive … as long as you formed relationships, you did the best you could; if you loved other people and other people loved you back, then you had a good life, regardless of what happened,” Aldrete said.
After settling on “Morning Sun” in September, she waited over a month for scripts to arrive, so auditions were postponed by three weeks and spilled into late October. It ended up coinciding with the auditions for senior Ryan Backhus’ play, “A Stop in Time.”
Fortunately, Aldrete only needed a cast of three actresses. Charley McBride, her mother Claudette McBride and her daughter Tessa McBride were played by senior Diya Kapoor, sophomore Ria Abraham and junior Charlotte Hu, respectively. Initially just the stage manager, Hu actually stepped in a couple weeks into rehearsal and volunteered for Tessa’s role, which the previously cast actress had to drop due to time constraints.
Looking back on the casting choices, Aldrete felt that Abraham highlighted Claudette’s mean, rough outlook on life, which contrasted well with Kapoor’s interpretation of Charley’s diffident but hypercritical personality.
“Claudette has a lot of spite in her because she grew up in a way harder time than Charley, so she’s tougher on Charley than she really deserves,” Aldrete said. “Charley is genuine and really awkward. She doesn’t always really know what she’s doing, but she tries her hardest anyway. [Kapoor] has that vibe where she feels authentic to herself — kind of awkward sometimes, but committed to what she wants to do.”
The chemistry between these two characters brought out the habits and trauma that transcended generations. Reflecting on her parenthood, a self-aware Charley notices how she started acting terrifyingly similar to her mother. As the director, Aldrete also helped shape these personalities, working with her cast to fill in the gaps she observed.
“It’s like a collaborative process. You don’t just tell the person what to do — they also have to give their own feedback and input,” Aldrete said. “And, actors also have to bring their own life to the character for it to really work.”
For “Morning Sun,” Aldrete felt that lighting was the main design focus. She used lighting changes to accurately convey the differences between scenes, because the script’s disjointed — and at times, stream-of-consciousness-style — narration and dialogue could be very confusing. With this in mind, the production team arranged almost 80 different light cues for the whole show. These made the time incongruities and perspective jumps clear, especially when these jumps happened mid-scene or even mid-sentence in characters’ dialogue.
“When I was reading the script, I was thoroughly confused after the first read through,” Aldrete said. She decided to fix that by giving any narrated scenes blue lighting and any active scenes orange lighting, two complementary colors that were very distinct.
Aldrete described the production as “a little bit messy and chaotic,” citing some of her cast’s lack of previous acting experience as a key challenge. Nearly two hours long, the play forced each of the three cast members to memorize lines in a very lengthy script, a process which Aldrete personally provided strategies and assisted them with.
While she doesn’t plan on pursuing a career in directing, Aldrete has always felt connected to drama and acting and hopes to take on a few roles recreationally in the future, preferring to be in the cast instead of the production team. The chaotic yet rewarding experience of directing a show was still a highlight of her drama experience at the school.
“I think during these productions, sometimes you just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks,” Aldrete said. “It got messy sometimes, and that’s part of the reason why I had so much fun.”
Mantle produced “Sylvia” under a stressful timeline
In a completely different style from Aldrete’s production, Mantle chose to direct “Sylvia,” which explored human-animal connections and companionships through more lighthearted, humorous dialogue. While searching for “something weird, off-the-cuff and a little silly-goofy,” she said this play was recommended to her by drama teacher Benjamin Brotzman, who was involved in a “Sylvia” production during his undergraduate studies.
“I read the whole thing, and [I realized] this is exactly what I wanted. It’s not too crazy where it’s absurdist, but it’s still weird enough and has enough character to it that I felt like I can build something really interesting and memorable out of it,” Mantle said. “Once I started reading it, I was like, ‘I need somebody to play this dog.’ It was gonna happen, and I [was] so excited for it.”
The play revolves around the couple Greg and Kate, played by senior Apollo Burgess and sophomore Saachi Saraf, whose relationship is split by “man’s sacred relationship to dog,” or Greg’s reluctance to give up a dog.
Junior Nila Venkataratnam plays Sylvia: an overly eager, enthusiastic and energetic Labrador with a big personality, big expressions and a lot of sass. Working through communication problems, the couple and the dog learn to navigate the boundaries of love and companionship.
“It’s a lot about balance, compassion, understanding and empathy for others,” Mantle said. “It’s creating this culture of empathy and being able to understand each other, and making a world where everybody is kind and a little bit more compassionate.”
Mantle researched plays throughout the summer and finalized a plan for “Sylvia” in mid-August. She felt the pre-production outline — one part of the capstone project that she had to fill out while planning the show — helped her smooth out production elements like set designs and sound effects.
How the rest of the timeline played out, however, was anything but smooth. Auditions for both her and Stanton’s show were held at the same time, and both wanted similar actors for roles, which created some competition. The shows themselves also had to be held on back-to-back weekends, even after rescheduling around actors’ conflicts, which made balancing both shows potentially difficult for actors.
Noticing how well their banter as dog and unloving mother played out in the audition, Mantle cast Venkataratnam as Sylvia and Saraf as Kate. Burgess was cast for Greg, and Davies was cast as Tom, Phyllis and Leslie for his versatility — Leslie, for example, declares her gender to be whatever his or her recipient wishes, a detail accentuated by the costumes.
The first rehearsal was held on the Friday after fall semester finals, where the cast blocked nearly a third of the show. With several cast members traveling over winter break, the company was essentially left with a month to complete everything else upon return. This was made even more difficult with the added load of spring musical rehearsals, which nearly all of Mantle’s cast was also involved in.
“The two weeks before the show, everybody gets sick, and this is my worst nightmare. I get a text from Apollo saying he has a sore throat, so I was like, ‘OK, it’s really fine, you can stay home. I’d rather you feel better than get worse,’” Mantle said. “I come to rehearsal, and every other actor is more sick than Apollo was. Ben Davies was coughing a lot — it was not it was not good. Friday, I get sick.”
Thankfully, Mantle was able to pull together everyone in the final week of rehearsals, finalizing costumes and props on Monday and spending 3-4 hours on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday doing dress rehearsals.
“It was definitely nerve wracking and really stressful because it was a lot to do in a short amount of time, but I’m honestly really grateful that my actors put in the work that they needed to,” Mantle said. Despite the twists and turns, she said: “It genuinely could have gone so much worse, so I’m grateful for the show that I was able to put on.”
Mantle also cited the lack of a stage manager as another difficulty. Often, she found herself juggling the directing and stage managing aspect and wanted to consult a second opinion.
Through the challenges of directing, Mantle said her time management and organizational skills were pushed to the limit. She learned to create schedules, hold others accountable and front-load work. Looking back on her experience in drama as a whole, Mantle also noted several practical skills she developed.
“Being able to think on your feet, be flexible, work through your thoughts and improv through a conversation is everyday life,” Mantle said. “[I learned that it was important to just be able] to say ‘Okay, move on, become better and improve the show as much as you can,’ and not get too worked up in the little things — little mistakes happen.”
Having tried both direction and acting, Mantle says that she would consider stage managing or backstage work in college.
“I’m just really grateful that I got the opportunity to do this,” Mantle said. “I think it was a really incredible learning opportunity, and I’m just super grateful for everyone involved. It was really fun, and I’m really glad that I got to do it.”
Stanton’s “146 Point Flame” strengthens a new appreciation for the victims of atrocities
Stanton took a more serious and historical approach to the project, with her 45-minute adaptation of “146 Point Flame” by Matt Thompson. The play is a poetic take on the events surrounding the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in NYC, where 146 lives were lost. The show ran on March 7-8 at 7 p.m. in the Thermond Drama Center.
The play follows four young immigrant women as they recount their life in America and their deaths to the flames of the factory fire. It featured freshman Tessie Berger and seniors Niraali Garg, Katie Berger, Diya Iyer and Ryan Backhus.
“The performance itself was great,” Stanton said. We had a decent showing because I went around to all of the classrooms and asked teachers to give their students supplemental credit for attending.”
Stanton initially planned to do a short film for her project, but struggled with finding scripts online. She remembers seeing the play at a festival last year, which made it easy for her to envision.
“I did direct and coach the actors, but most of their acting was on their own,” Stanton said. “I cast these people because I know they can make these choices on their own, and I don’t specifically have to tell them to do specific things.”
Given that the show is completely student-run, Stanton had to balance managing technical aspects of the show like lighting and stage direction with guiding actors, fitting everything into a tight schedule.
“The biggest challenge for me was just managing time, because I’ve directed shows in the past, but nothing to this scale,” Stanton said. “This experience strengthened my directing abilities since it’s a 45-minute show, and the previous ones I’ve directed were only 10 minutes long.”
In the end, Stanton was able to synthesize all of the elements of acting and directing into a beautiful final picture.
“One of my favorite scenes is between Vincenza and [her date], where she’s recounting the date she had with this guy,” Stanton said. “I like it because it looks so beautiful with the lighting — we wanted to make it look like a sunset, where you can see the silhouettes of the other actors, and they’re sewing in the back — it was really beautiful.”
Ultimately, Stanton hopes the audience left with a new appreciation for those who suffer from life-changing disasters, since they’re frequently ignored in modern society.
“A lot of the time, we think of victims of these kinds of events just as statistics or numbers; we feel compassion for them and bad for them, but we don’t understand the weight of it because we weren’t there,” Stanton said. “This show allows us to understand their lives and voices as victims.”
