Saturday, September 7, 2024
SHS junior Nova Gould practices a serious moment for her character during a rehearsal for “The Code Breaker.”
SHS one-act play director Josh Sexton coaches students during rehearsal.
Despite significant difficulties, SHS’s One-Act Play company defied expectations by advancing to the area competition.
SHS sophomore Aiden Perrotta, sophomore Dominique Tamaoki, freshman Sarah Grazer and junior Nova Gould rehearse for the public performances of their one-act play “The Code Breaker.”
SHS freshman Sarah Grazer gets into the mindset of a manipulative computer named Ruby during rehearsal for “The Code Breaker.”
The show must go on.
And it did because Springtown High School theater students and staff made sure of it despite facing multiple difficulties.
This year’s One-Act Play company carried their production of “The Code Breaker” to the area competition. Though they didn’t advance as far as last year’s company, the cast and crew said this achievement speaks to their resilience in the face of hardship.
“We’ve gone through a lot this year,” SHS junior and One-Act Play cast member Nova Gould said, adding that the fact that they made it to area “is insanely good for how much we've had to work this year.”
Gould said expectations for the cast and crew were just to be able to perform at the district competition. Instead, the team advanced to the bi-district competition and then to area.
One of the factors that made this year’s competitive season unusual was a change in leadership.
The 2021-22 season director left SHS at the end of last school year, and a new teacher led the theater department throughout the fall. Then, that new teacher left, and Josh Sexton, who has been an assistant director for the past few years, stepped in to lead the students through competition. He was aided by Springtown Middle School theater teacher Aubyn Wood as well as his wife and SHS teacher Lilly Sexton.
In addition to the director change-up, the cast and crew had to manage through two relocations of performances. They also kept running over their time limits and had to keep cutting scenes.
Despite the challenges, the theater students surpassed expectations by advancing to area and bringing home individual awards.
“They just went with the storm and did fantastic,” Josh Sexton said.
Actors Gould, Jason Patterson, Malia Vincent-Wilson and Carolina Williams earned accolades at the contests. Stage technicians Lex Teague, Lerin Aquino and Bernard Bast were also honored for their work.
Gould participated in the One-Act Play contest last year and won only one award. This year, she was consistently praised.
“This year I was able to get an award at every contest,” she said, naming off the honors she received, “which really made me feel appreciated and seen for what I've put into my shows and my work, so I can't wait to do it again next year.”
At the area competition, the SHS company finished behind Decatur. For some, this was a welcome defeat since their former director from last year’s season — Rebecca Phillips — helmed the Decatur team this year.
“When we found out that we didn't advance, I think everybody kind of just hoped and prayed that it was Decatur who went on because Ms. Phillips — especially for those of us who were here last year — is very dear to our hearts, and so we really hoped that she was able to move on,” Gould said.
But the students’ warm feelings for Phillips don’t negate their appreciation for this year’s directors.
“We're also all really grateful to Mr. Sexton and Mrs. Sexton and Ms. Wood,” said Aquino, a junior and stage technician. “They didn't have to come in and help us when they did, and they didn't have to stay with us through everything. Like, they had a choice, and they chose to stay with us.”
Josh Sexton, who some students hope will be able to stick around for next year’s season, praised the One-Act Play company’s dedication.
“I’m just extremely proud of their commitment to this program,” he said. “It has been an adventurous year for sure.”
Aquino’s takeaway from the season is that the cast and crew needed to work together as a team and help each other.
“If our company wasn't as strong as it was, I don't think we would have gotten through what we went through, like losing a teacher and getting a new director,” she said. “I feel like having a close company who gets along with each other is really important.”
Last year’s One-Act Play company members worked hard to make their performances — of a grieving family and a woman whose life was saved by a heart transplant — as authentic as possible.
In contrast, Gould said this year’s play, a dystopian science fiction tale, provokes viewers to question what is and isn’t real.
“The Code Breaker” follows a group of teenagers who grow up under the supervision of Ruby, a computer system. The teens experience life in isolation before one of them discovers the outside world.
“Ruby is not that great of a mom,” freshman Sarah Grazer said, prompting some of her peers to burst into laughter. “I’m Ruby's understudy, and she's a very manipulative character who starts off where you think that she's a very good guide for them and then you realize that her intentions are not in the best place.”
Josh Sexton, who didn’t pick the play but inherited it from the previous director, anticipated that parts of a science fiction world may be difficult for some viewers to understand, so he led students to concentrate on the more realistic parts of story.
“We still have the sci-fi aspect to it, but we really wanted to focus on the story itself, which is four teenagers growing up,” he said.
Theater students interviewed by the Epigraph said they liked “The Code Breaker” and being able to add their interpretations of it to the performances.
“It leaves a lot of creativity open to our actors and our technicians and aspects of the show that usually we aren't given creativity to,” sophomore and stage technician Bernard Bast said. “Usually a set, it's very defined on how the set is, but in this show we're able to experiment with our set, the layout of the set and how we get it interpreted, so I like its creativity that we can use with it and our freedom of experimentation with the set.”
Being an understudy, Grazer didn’t get to perform during the One-Act Play competitive performances, but she’ll get that chance during the public performances on Friday and Saturday.
Grazer has performed as Ruby once before at an open rehearsal when the lead actor wasn’t available, and she enjoyed that experience for the most part. Gould chimed in to say that Grazer “did really good” at that time.
“I honestly felt like that was probably my best run-through of it because I feel like whenever you perform, for me at least, I get the pressure of it, and then I do even better than I would practice,” Grazer said.
Grazer said she can’t exactly relate to her artificial intelligence character, but she understands how Ruby relates to the world currently where technology is a big part of people’s lives.
Despite the challenge of bringing life to the controlling computer character, Grazer said she has had fun with the role.
“It's so different from being a human. It's basically like all day I'm Sarah and I have my Sarah world, and then I get here and I'm a completely different person,” she said. “I don’t want to be mean in real life, so then I get on the stage, and I'm a whole new person who's like, ‘You do this, and you do this, and now I'm breaking down because I’m a computer.’ It's just a very fun, different role to play.”
The last chances for the Springtown community to watch performances of “The Code Breaker” — which will include additional scenes that were cut from competition — will be at 6 p.m. Friday, April 28 and 6 p.m. Saturday, April 29 in the SHS auditorium.
