By Sarah Garett
On the Friday before the big Westminster game, Kaitlyn Castellaw, a Lovett cheerleader and now a senior, was buzzing with excitement for the Battle of Buckhead. So were the rest of the students in the cafe.
Dressed out in her uniform, the main thing on Kaitlyn’s mind was what the musical would be, a mystery that would be solved at lunch. She was hoping it would be Mean Girls, “but now I really want Grease or Mamma Mia.” They’d gotten some hints: “There’s a king, there’s a lot of different dances, and a movie made after it.” Still, she said that as long as it is fun for her senior year she’d be happy with anything.
The theater program at Lovett is very intense, and each actor/actress works extremely hard to pull off the shows. Reflecting on Into the Woods, the production from the Spring, she said “a lot of teachers were worried we wouldn’t be able to pull it off because of how difficult the music is, but we ended up doing it so well.”
Kaitlyn hopes that the theater program will continue to push its limits and try to do more challenging shows in the future.
Anticipating what was to come in the following weeks, she said it can get a little overwhelming and competitive in rehearsals. Kaitlyn sometimes struggles to find the balance between a competitive but also friendly and fun environment. She said that there is always a lot of drama during the shows because cast members get into arguments over who gets the spotlight. While theater can be about wanting attention and being center stage, for Kaitlyn, it is all about her passion for singing and acting.
When Kaitlyn started high school, there were no shows because of Covid. Towards the end of her freshman year, she started acting outside of school and fell in love with it, so she made the decision to participate in the musical the next year. She had so much fun performing in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory that she decided to take theater her junior year.
Over the summer, Kaitlyn attended a voice intensive at Lovett to enhance her vocal skills for the musical. Because the intensive included acting, dancing, and singing, it gave her the opportunity to get feedback from voice and dance coaches in a focused, controlled environment.
To get ready for Honors Theater, she had to read a book called “A Challenge for the Actor.” They are using this book to learn new techniques to better their skills. “I would say ‘perfect our skills,’” she said, “but we aren’t allowed to say that in the theater because our work is never done!”
With all of these new experiences and skills, Kaitlyn said that she is ready to tackle more challenging parts of theater.
Outside of Lovett, Kaitlyn and her mom have loved going to see the shows at the Fox Theater and are trying to make it a new tradition. She recently went to see “Hades Town,” which she didn’t know anything about but ended up really enjoying.
On the other hand, when she went to see Hairspray, she already knew all the songs going in, but it still exceeded her expectations. With the summer voice intensive group, she went to see Wicked. One of her friends knew the costume designer for the main character, Elphaba, so they got to go to the stage door and meet the actors.
It perhaps goes without saying that Kaitlyn loves everyone from the theater program; her Honors theater classmates have become some of her best friends.
When she’s not challenging herself with theater, she’s managing a harder course load than normal this year, she’s working on the SGA board, she’s chipping away at college applications, and she’s being a mentor with PAL.
Even though she is nervous about everything she has to do this year, she is so excited to enjoy her last year on the Riverbank with her friends.
When I ran into Kaitlyn later that day, the musical mystery had been revealed. The show would be Newsies. She was so excited because she has always loved the movie and show. She had already learned all of the tracks, and she and all her friends from theater were already predicting what role each person would play.
As for that clue about the king? There’s no actual king in this show about the newsboy strike of 1899. Confused, I asked Kaitlyn why Mr. Decker said there was a king; she informed me that one of the characters does sing “King of New York.”
