With area high school students performing plays on topics spanning the spectrum from the Holocaust and Greek tragedy to chihuahua-toting lawyers and soulful wizardry, it appears that all the Upper Valley’s a stage these days.
The season hit full stride this past weekend, with Hanover High School’s Footlighters ensemble tackling Jean Anouilh’s World War II-era adaptation of the Sophocles play Antigone. This weekend, the Trumbull Hall Troupe of students from more than half a dozen Upper Valley schools will sing and dance about not judging books by their covers in Legally Blonde: The Musical at the Lebanon Opera House.
Between rehearsals and performances of Legally Blonde, which hits the stage of the Lebanon Opera House on Friday and Saturday nights at 7 and Sunday afternoon at 3, a number of cast members are also juggling commitments to other upcoming shows, particularly Lebanon High School performers preparing for Thoroughly Modern Millie, the Roaring Twenties musical that the school’s Wet Paint Players will stage next month.
“About 10 of them are doing double duty,” Jonathan Verge, a 2000 alumnus of Lebanon High and of the Wet Paint Players who began directing the school’s drama program this fall. “A lot of them are seniors who are applying for college, doing college auditions and doing other extra-curricular activities.”
Jean Alexander, producer for the Trumbull Hall Troupe, said this week that she has been working on coordinating schedules more closely with drama directors from schools whose productions overlap with the troupe. In addition to performers from Lebanon High, students in Legally Blonde this fall come from Hanover High, Woodstock Union High (where the Yoh Theater troupe is gearing up for The Wiz), Thetford Academy (Neil Simon’s comedy Rumors this month) and The Sharon Academy.
“We do try to work in concert with the other schools,” Alexander said. “(Lebanon drama advisor) Liz Borger and I talked before we started off the year.
“We don’t want the kids to have to choose. We don’t want to clash. We welcome everyone.”
Alexander added that most of the cast for Legally Blonde is made up of seniors because of the “more mature” content of the show. She said that the troupe decided to stage a licensed play, instead of writing its own, as its producers customarily do, because “it was a way for us to reach out to audiences who might perceive us as a kids’ theater. We wanted to showcase the quality and caliber of our players.”
After returning to his native Upper Valley last fall to start the Gatherwool Theatre Company, Verge started to appreciate the quality and caliber of the players from Lebanon during the Wet Paint Players’ production of Xanadu.
“Among the upperclassmen, I saw that there were a lot of talented girls, a lot of good tap dancers,” said Verge, who in his day performed in Wet Paint’s productions of Brigadoon and The Music Man. “When the time came to pick a show for this year, it became clear that Millie would take advantage of their talents really well. It’s got lots of strong female roles.
“And for the Upper Valley, it’s a fresh new show. Not something that people here have seen over and over. The idea was, ‘Let’s branch out, step out of the comfort zone in terms of what people are familiar with.”
In that same spirit, the Mascoma Players this coming weekend stage the V.B. Leghorn comedy Collective Dating, with performances on Friday and Saturday nights in Mascoma Valley Regional High School’s new auditorium. Director David Wilson last week described the series of one-act romantic comedies as following in the tradition of the Love: American Style TV series of the early 1970s. Both performances start at 7.
The spotlight next turns to Rivendell Academy, to Hartford High School and to the Performer’s Playground in Newport during the second weekend of November.
At Rivendell’s gym in Orford, the school’s thespians will take on the Noel Coward comedy Blithe Spirit on Nov. 10, 11 and 12, each night at 7. The play follows the complications that ensue when a cranky ghost haunts her novelist/socialite husband as he tries to move on with his career and his personal life.
Hartford High’s music department stages Seussical at 7 p.m. on Nov. 10, 11 and 12 in the school auditorium. To reserve tickets ($7 to $10) and learn more, visit the school’s main office between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays or call 802-359-1172.
In collaboration with Amplified Arts, Performer’s Playground’s Claremont- and Newport-area actors ages 12 to 17, tackles the Wendy Kesselman adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank, on Nov. 11 at 7 p.m., Nov. 12 at 2 and 7 p.m., Nov. 18 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 19 at 2 p.m. In addition to auditioning and rehearsing, many members of the cast and crew worked with Newport High teacher Michele Caccavaro on studying the time period, politics and circumstances of the rise to power of the Nazis, and how the Frank family wound up hiding for their lives in the secret annex of a house in Amsterdam. Admission is $5 to $10. To reserve tickets and learn more, visit theperformersplayground.org.
Before the Thanksgiving break, Thetford Academy’s drama department performs Rumors, the Neil Simon farce about the confusion erupting after a deputy mayor of New York wounds himself with a gunshot during a party celebrating his 10th wedding anniversary. The show goes on at the academy’s Martha J. Rich Theater at 7 p.m. on Nov. 17, 18 and 19, under the direction of Ray Chapin, who advises that the play “contains strong language and adult situations that are not appropriate for younger audiences.” Admission is $5 at the door.
And over the first weekend of December, Woodstock Union High School’s Yoh Theater troupe will ease on down the road with The Wiz, the late-1970s adaptation of the Depression-era movie The Wizard of Oz. Performances at the high school are scheduled for Dec. 2 and Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. and for Dec. 4 at 2 p.m.
The Trumbull Hall Troupe performs Legally Blonde: The Musical at the Lebanon Opera House on Friday and Saturday nights at 7 and on Sunday afternoon at 3. Admission is by donation, with proceeds going to the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth, the Zienzele Foundation (which helps poor families in Zimbabwe become self-sufficient) and the Upper Valley Haven. To reserve seats and learn more, visit trumbullhalltroupe.org/tickets.
The University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., inducted Parker Goss of Lebanon into the school’s Order of Gownsmen honor society on Oct. 7, during the university’s Founders’ Day convocation.
Lebanon High School recently named senior Meredith Melendy as its student of the month for October, citing “her determination to do her very best, her skill in class discussion and her kindness to her classmates.” A teacher who had Melendy in a double-period class during her junior year praised her as “the only student who came to class every day prepared to be an active participant in class discussion. There was never a single day when she sat back, was unprepared, or waited for someone else to question or reflect.”
As a varsity athlete, Melendy stands out for her “focus and effort” on the field hockey pitch and the basketball court. After Melendy led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance during a Labor Day speech by former presidential candidate and current U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), another teacher observed that the student “handled the spotlight and attention with grace, poise, and no small degree of excitement. … I will never forget when she turned and hugged me after having spoken to Sanders and given him a painting she labored over last spring.”
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304. Education-related news and announcements also can be sent to schoolnotes@vnews.com.