It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
(Well, for me at least)
by Joanna Rominger, Director
Every year I often get asked the same questions:
How do you do it?
Why do you do it?
And my response is always:
I don’t know.
Because I love it.
There is something so magical about watching a group of 6th,
7th, and 8th grade students come together to reach a
common goal. Watching them come together
every afternoon over the course of seven weeks, to work together to build a
production from the bottom up, and to watch
them take their individual talent and let it shine through the talent of
others. Yes, there are times that I want
to pull my hair out, but it’s apart of the process, and part of the reason I
look forward to coming to Germantown Academy every day.
When I took over as the director of the MS musical seven years
ago, I was so excited and nervous at the same time. I had no idea what to expect. What I soon learned is that GA has a special
breed of students in the middle school--students who are hard workers and take pride in what they love to
do. I had no idea what they were
capable of, and the level of work they would be able to produce. To this day there isn’t a week that goes by,
when I’m not amazed by the level of drive and talent that I am blessed to work
with each year in the musical.
People who haven’t participated in a theatrical production
before don’t realize the amount of work that a cast member is expected to
complete throughout the production process.
Every afternoon from 3:15-5:15, 54 students attend a rehearsal to learn
music, movement, and blocking. They are
asked to learn a show that is identical to that of what professional actors and
actresses learn in New York and Philadelphia.
From November 14th -January 24th (minus two weeks
for winter break!) the students learn 17 songs, 129 pages of dialogue, and 16
scenes of blocking. You may notice that
the time they are expected to learn everything is a week before the show
opens. That is because their last week
of rehearsals, their “tech week”, is the week that the show gets handed over to
them. It’s their week to take ownership
of everything they have learned, and it’s their turn to make the show their
own.
Finally the day comes, the day we’ve been working so hard
for. The day that seemed so far away at
the start, but now all you can say is, “I can’t believe it’s actually
here!” There is nothing like opening
night jitters. The combination of
excitement and anxiety creates the most incredible feeling of butterflies all
over your body. I know that I’m not the
one performing on the stage, but I have those same butterflies alongside the
performers. The fears of what could go
wrong; knowing that there isn’t any more you can do to help them is so scary and
exciting at the same time. As the
overture begins, I take my seat with my assistant director, Kristen
Donches. All we can do is sit back…try
to relax…and enjoy the show. The first
round of applause that the kids receive always brings a sigh of relief,
along with the realization that they can do this. The moment the last round of applause is heard before
the curtain call, I am always holding back tears of joy and pride. Watching the smiles of each student on that
stage as they take their bow is almost as amazing as watching the look on
their parent's faces cheering from the audience. It is at this moment when I think about the question of why do I do it. And it is in this
moment and many like it that answer the question. This
moment says it all and makes everything we do to get here worth it.
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