By Zoe Robinson and Mariella Bishop
It’s a pretty funny thing to sit in the Hendrix-Chenault theater and hear students sing a song about Revolting Children. Fortunately, they weren’t singing about The Lovett School and instead about Crunchem Hall, the setting for the award-winning musical Matilda, based on Roald Dahl’s children’s novel.
Theater director Mr. Decker had been wanting to put on Matilda for years. It tells the story of a young, brilliant girl ignored by those around her, who ultimately finds the courage to stand up for what’s right, in the face of very mean parents and a very, very mean headmistress Trunchbull. Despite featuring some pretty cruel behavior, Roald Dahl’s story has a happy, goofy quality that made rehearsing so much fun. However, there’s a sad quality to it for the seniors because it mimics their own current experience: growing up.
There are certain parts of the final year’s experience that the senior actors and crew come to expect, but there were also a few surprises in store.
A prime example: the post-PDC, gradewide sickness that came for all of them. Every musical, stage managers prep hand sanitizer and Emergen-C for communal winter cold, but this time the company encountered a horrific case of the flu. It’s always a threat that if the entire cast gets sick, the show would have to be cancelled, but they all rallied to ensure that we would have our final show. With 13 seniors in the cast, and everyone having to be out of school at least once that week, they needed to pick up each other’s slack. And, after all these years working together, they definitely knew how.
Rehearsals were not only affected by this sickness but also by the unexpected school closures due to the storm. With 2 days lost (one Monday and one Saturday), not to mention the significant increase in days off this year, the cast had one of the shortest amounts of time they’d ever had to complete a play. These obstacles only pushed them to work harder, with many seniors even holding their own senior-led snow day rehearsal at a castmate’s house.
Many of the seniors feel like the end of this journey has snuck up on them, even though it feels like just yesterday when they started here.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my peers graduating,” Ansley Hall, who starred as Trunchbull, reminisced to me, “and losing a wave of actors in the shows, I hadn’t really thought about before… Honestly, now, I definitely feel more at peace with it than I thought I would.”
For Ansley, someone who’s participated in every single show and drama class the past 4 years, the group of people she’s found in this environment has been foundational. Personalities, clothes, and interests may change, but this group has been there for her all these years, and shaped her as a person.
Her friends in the department have been there for her, but they’ve also helped her grow in significant ways. By supporting each other and watching each other evolve and work hard, they’ve grow together in confidence and as professionals. “In your underclassmen years, you’re fighting for people’s respect and proving yourself, and the last two shows I’ve done I’ve been a lead, and I’ve felt really good about the work I’ve put out,” she said. “I feel really proud of myself.” Seeing the “next generation” of actors get to feel proud of themselves as they worked through some of the most difficult parts of the play made her feel proud as well – especially watching them figure out the songs and choreography.
And it wasn’t easy! Freshman Sonul Mital said, “Revolting was difficult in terms of the singing and dancing, and musical theater aspect because you have to do so much of the acting proportion too where you’re doing something different then just being mean to the little kids or being scared of everything, you have to find yourself in the character and be like ‘wait im revolting, im revolting against something ive been apart of for so long’, which is hard to do, and it’s tiring.”
According to the freshmen actors interviewed, the Revolting Children and School songs were the most difficult to transition from the Black Box to the stage. Freshman Madeline Pullen said the wings were smaller than they’d thought, and the alphabet blocks they had to carry during School Song were big, which made it hard to squeeze past one another.
It was amazing to watch School Song progress throughout the play, from its first performance on stage, with traffic jams and lots of rushed cues, to the final performance where it was barely recognizable from the first rehearsal I’d seen on the stage. It’s understandable why these 2 songs are considered the most difficult in the musical. Still, the cast did an amazing job of fixing small errors and navigating roadblocks.
While Alden Susong, who played Mrs. Phelps, feels a strong sense of pride over her work, she’s mourning the departure of the seniors. “The time’s winding down, it’s very weird. Like I know it’s ending and I have known for a while, but it’s finally that time,” she said.
Despite not doing every show, Alden has formed just as much of an attachment to this group as Ansley. “It’s given me community, and my best friends are the ones I have in theater,” she explained. She also said she was grateful to get to work with the new freshmen and that they were all so great. “Our dynamic as the [seniors, juniors, sophomores] is something that we know and are comfortable with, so it’s always scary a new wave of people coming in… but they’re amazing and talented and so hard working, and I love them all,” she said.
The freshmen feel the same way, and, from the interviews I’d gathered, all of them had said how welcoming and accepting the seniors had been towards them. “They kinda just make you feel like you belong to something, to like a part of a community that you otherwise might feel super lonely in, and they give lots of tips not just about theater but about life itself,” freshman Sonul said.
Freshman Ariana Bandyopadhyay agreed. “Obviously, being a freshman, I’m not super close with the seniors, but they’ve all been super nice and welcoming and they’re all super encouraging, I look up to them, it’s kinda sad to see them go but I’m glad they get to go onto college and getting new experiences but it’s also sad,” she said. “They’re the leaders of our little theater community, and it’s always sad to see someone you look up to leave.”
It is bittersweet for some to watch the seniors move on to the next part of their journey. This musical felt like the perfect one to end on, not just for the seniors, but for the new theater coming soon. Some songs, like When I Grow Up, seemed to have more of an impact due to this being the seniors’ last show.
“When I grow up…it is really emotional, especially with the seniors doing it,” Ariana said. “And being a freshman is like I know I’m on the younger side, so I kinda relate to the song because I don’t know, when I’m a senior I think ima do this, ima do that, and then the seniors are on the other end, about to graduate and that’s kinda sad to think about…I remember being a middle schooler and watching the musical and being like ‘oh my gosh they’re so good!’ and it’s such a cool experience to finally be on the Lovett stage actually performing.”
Like the song’s message, the seniors are standing at a moment they’d dreamed about when they were younger. While the underclassmen sing about what their futures might hold, the seniors are about to step into theirs. This song seemed like the perfect way to send off the seniors in their final show.
She also shared her hopes to continue with what she’s learned from the department. Lovett theater has prepared every senior well to go out into professional, adult spaces and act. “It’s been fun, but it’s also been a great education!” she said. “It also helps that everyone here is so talented… the teachers are great, but it’s you guys that really have made this what it is.” Ansley wholeheartedly agreed, saying that it’s been “a privilege for sure” to work with this senior class of actors.
So, after all these years, the journey may be ending, but the friendships and memories will last us forever. In fact, they’ve all probably made a few too many memories together after spending at least 15-18 hours a week rehearsing together for 4 years. In the words of Alden, “I love [everyone]… but after working just us for this long, we definitely could use some space!”
While the freshmen say hello to theater for the first time, the seniors say a sad goodbye – not only to the Lovett theater department, but to the literal space itself.
It was unfortunate to hear that the Lovett stage was being torn down, but it will be for the greater good that is the Riverbank Center. Still, it would be heartbreaking for some, especially freshmen, to leave behind our theater until their senior year, when the new theater would supposedly be done. Even though this may be the last musical or play performed at the Lovett theater until 2028, this would also be the seniors’ last musical before they graduate.
As we all know, the end of this year will mark the start of the Campus Master Plan construction. The theater’s main rehearsal space, in particular, the Blackbox theater, is getting an especially drastic makeover. The room, which is now entirely black with no windows or outside noise let in, is conceptualized to be an all-engaging space. This made it a pretty big shock for the seniors to hear that it would be redone not only with a window, but potentially not even in black!
One senior tradition in particular helps seniors really prepare to leave the space behind: kissing the stage. “To anyone reading this, I know it sounds gross, but it’s actually so tragic,” senior stage management head Kate Dubord said. It’s emotional on its own, but knowing that we’re simultaneously kissing the entire space goodbye, for us and the next few classes, is a weird idea to accept.
Still, opportunities await.
“I’m sad because I’ve done productions on this stage like singing and dancing and it’s been really fun and I’m always going to remember it,” Sonul said, ”But I’m also excited that we’re getting new beginnings and expanding the horizons and they’re introducing new things and they’ll give us new experiences that we wouldn’t otherwise have gotten, and I think that’s really cool.
