“Always & Forever, Kate”: An Original Student-Produced Musical

These two Pres juniors have worked relentlessly for two years to now enjoy the fruits of their labor: the production of their play will be shown in Presentation’s Valenzuela Theater for three shows during April. This modern student-produced musical, “Always & Forever, Kate,” is about a girl who joins group therapy after her best friend dies in a car accident. She befriends some quirky characters and rebuilds the notion of love and friendship.

The two students have different specialties that they applied to the creation of the musical. Griffith wrote the musical score and Hoffman wrote the script, but the collaboration of these two friends made the complete musical possible.

The inspiration behind the play was also a shared effort. “Emily and I sat down two summers ago and basically started hammering out ideas, Hoffman recalled. “We knew we valued a story about characters–little sub plots made us really excited!

“I jotted down settings where teenagers would be in some kind of group, and group therapy sounded unique. We also both knew a girl who lost a friend a couple years ago, and she wrote a monologue about her last conversation with that friend. It was really inspiring.”

Hoffman and Griffith have put a lot of hard work in the creation of the play, but they believe they couldn’t have done it without some help along the way. Both expressed gratitude to Performing Arts Director Mr. Houle and many friends for their constant guidance by reading the script, providing feedback and supporting them through the whole process.

Mr. Houle said he was thrilled to be of assistance. “When I overheard them talking about it, I told them if they were to finish it, I would be happy to produce it as an ITS production,” he said. “In order to prepare Grace as director, I installed her as my assistant director for Little Women.

“Both Emily and Grace have been directed by me in several productions, and Emily was in my own original musical this summer. Only students with a lot of experience doing theater could write a credible musical, so their past theater experience should help them prepare and present their original show.”

Hoffman and Griffith both have interesting backgrounds in theater. Their first experience of writing a play began in middle school, where they focused on a play about Greek gods. Ever since then, the dynamic duo have starred in a multitude of Presentation theater productions. The two students both love the performing arts but specialize in different areas of theater as Griffith says, “Grace has always enjoyed writing stories and seems to constantly carry a pen in her hand. I, too, love to write but my passion is directed more towards music and lyrics.”

Griffith and Hoffman have recently held the auditions for the small but hard-working cast of 18 students: 14 girls and 4 boys. They now look forward to working with this group of enthusiastic actors in efforts to produce a great show.

Junior Lauren Fisher will be playing one of the main characters in the show, Kate.“I really like that this show is so modern,” she said. “Already reading over the script at auditions, I could tell this musical was different.  Doing a musical with a few of my best friends is a lot less pressuring.  It is nice to be able to just be free in this environment.”

Griffith is proud of the great accomplishment she and Hoffman have achieved. “This is the first time an original musical has been written and performed by students from Pres and we hope that everyone will come to see it! Our cast is truly unbelievable and I couldn’t be more excited to watch them create magic on stage.” “Always & Forever, Kate”  will play in the Valenzuela Theater on April 7, 9, and 10!

ITS Green Concert Review

The opening of the ITS Green Concert caught me by surprise. Mr. Houle did his normal “Don’t text or else I’ll come and hunt you down” speech. This time, however, he was singing it instead of telling it to the audience. I knew at that moment I was in for a treat.

On Oct. 7, Presentation’s International Thespian Society (ITS) filled the Valenzuela Theater with an eco-friendly atmosphere. ITS officers Jennifer O’Brien, Vanessa Miranda, Lindsay Ognoskie and Belinda Carrillo hosted a successful concert that spread awareness to the community about being more environmentally friendly. Other Pres campus clubs that helped make the concert impactful as well, including Peer Ministry, Dance Team, SPA and SEAs.

Whether it was a beautiful interpretive dance or an impactful PowerPoint informing the audience about the proposition on the upcoming November ballot, it was nice to see many clubs with different interests work together to help the environment. I saw this as a metaphor to the real world; many groups and countries of different backgrounds should work together on this single cause to make our environment the best it can be.

The concert featured a variety of songs, skits and dances. Junior Emily Griffith wrote “Lend A Hand” and performed it onstage with the help of her fellow juniors and senior Christine Jones. Senior Alexandra Zussman brought beautiful colors of the wind to the theater. One of the ITS officers, Lindsay Ognoskie, danced gracefully to the song “Werewolf.”

Dr. Seuss was represented at the concert as well. His message was articulated by seniors Sonika Suri, Sophie Wood and Kristine Wheeler along with many Pres girls in the skit “The Lorax.”  It was perfect—there were minimal mess ups, actresses were on cue with their lines, and the props were bright and colorful. There was also a scene in the skit when one of the actresses reached out to an audience member in the front row and gave her feathers that acted as seeds.

A veteran of the Valenzuela stage, Mr. Buell dressed up in suspenders and punched-out 3D glasses to give the audience a preview from the upcoming comedy “Little Shop of Horrors.” Mr. Buell hilariously sang his heart out about his plant that doesn’t seem to grow no matter what he does. To his surprise, Mr. Buell found out that his beloved plant loves human blood.

Most of the songs presented at the concert were original. Not only did Griffith compose a song, but Mr. Jim Houle and Dave Coldren, an alum parent and songwriter, did too. They wrote beautiful songs that were gracefully performed by the actors and actresses who sung them.

The finale was very impressive. The entire cast, wearing the same shirt, sang farewell to the audience. They left the audience with the motivation to treat the planet as a human, enjoy nature, work toward preserving the already damaged earth and work together as a community to make it a better place.

ITS Christmas!

On Dec. 4, the International Thespian Society (ITS) and improvisational team Spontaneous Combustion put on a show to share some Christmas cheer with the Pres community. The two groups put on an entertaining night that filled the audience with laughs and warmed their hearts despite the low temperature.

ITS is a club at Pres dedicated to letting those who love theatre be themselves. Members earn points through participating in productions at school. The girls involved in ITS get chances to act in the wide array of shows put on throughout the year or to be technicians, commonly known as techies, who do everything from building sets to manning the spotlights. Members of ITS also get the chance to lend their skills to local theatres to broaden their theatrical talents.

Spontaneous Combustion is a small but dedicated group of Pres girls and Bell guys who compete in the Comedy Sportz high school league. The improvisational team was started in 2007 when Mrs. Garcia-Rodriguez joined the Presentation community. “I felt like the team would be a nice addition to the already outstanding theatre arts department,” says Rodriguez. Although many of the shows done here at Pres consist only of our team, Spontaneous Combustion also travels to other schools to challenge their Comedy Sportz teams. Comedy Sportz involves many fun games in which players must interact with and entertain their audience. As the name “improvisational” implies, everything the team does during games is completely spur-of-the-moment, so the members of Spontaneous Combustion must think quickly and not be afraid to act, well, spontaneously.

“ITS Christmas” began with Leigh High school’s J.C. Molina, sophomore, dressed as an elf and telling Christmas-themed jokes. Junior Tanya Padagonkar performed a series of monologues throughout the show in the form of journal entries. The entries detailed the trials and tribulations of a man trying to survive a rather snowy holiday season. Junior Christine Jones and Bell junior Austin MacPhee then treated the audience to a sweet version of “Baby It’s Cold outside”.

Although she was not in any of the skits this year, ITS Officer Nicki Affonso-McMorrow, senior, enjoys participating in the show in any way she can. “It’s very relaxed,” she said, “but we designed it to really get Pres into the Christmas spirit.” She and the other members of ITS work together to come up with skits that will get their audience laughing. ITS gets ideas for the show from online as well as from the minds of their ever-talented members. In the longest skit of the night, sophomores Emily Griffith and Morgan Locke played reporters who were bored with their jobs. To spice things up, the two decide to improvise the rest of the news. This skit pulled many laughs from the audience and gave them characters they could relate to.

Next up were Kathy Stephan, sophomore, and Bell freshman Chris Brady. They two recited a poem about the difficulties Santa Claus faces in an increasingly politically correct world. Some of his many road blocks included his elves going on strike and the challenge of buying gender neutral gifts. In the end, Santa resolves to give the best gift of all: peace on earth. Bell senior Aaron Griffith wrapped up the night with the song “If You Believe” from the movie The Polar Express. The inspiring tune was the perfect way to send off the audience with loads of holiday spirit

Spontaneous Combustion was up next, opening with a Beatles song and a small dance from each of the members. The group was split into two teams of four for the night, and the extra player, named the “Jokester” had the opportunity to compete in all the games. Team captains Amanda Camillo, sophomore, and Shelby DieBold, senior, helped to pump up their teams and the audience by building human pyramids. “I love the improv team because I get to let out all of my excess energy and be as crazy and random as I want,” said Camillo. “You get to come out of your shell because nobody judges you.”

The group started off with the game “What Are You Doing?”. In this game, a player from one team pantomimes a random action. When the opposing team’s player asks, “What are you doing?” they must say something completely different. The second player must then act out what the first player says, and the game continues on. The referee can knock a player out for many reasons, including hesitation and stuttering. This game is used as a warm-up, so no points were awarded at the end, but this didn’t stop our comedy sportz players from pulling out all the stops and splitting a few sides in the process.

Another crowd favorite was “The Dating Game.” In this game, the Jokester played the part of a dating show host, while three players were the bachelors and bachelorettes, whose personas were picked by the audience, vie for the fifth player’s affections. Team captain DieBold channeled her inner Betty Boop, junior Tanya Padagonkar acted as Tiger Woods, and freshman Isabelle Polito hoped to woo the lucky bachelor as Harry Potter. Bell freshman Chris Brady had the opportunity to ask his teammates four questions each to discover their identities. At the end of the game, the team was awarded one point for every correct guess.

Later in the evening, Camillo’s team played catch up with the game “Slide Show.” In this game, two players are looking at a slide show of their last family vacation. The lights start out dimmed, but when they come up again, the other two players and the Jokester were in creative poses, meant to be a picture. The narrators then faced the challenge of coming up with an explanation for the many imaginative and funny poses presented to them. This game kept the audience on their toes, but they were not the only ones left guessing. Jen Greenfield, senior, was one of players posing. “Improv is so fast paced and it’s all about audience interaction. Each time I play a game I know it’ll turn out differently,” she said. For this game, points are awarded for the number of laughs the players earn from their audience.

For their final game of the night, both teams faced off in the game of “Story.”  In this game, the players make up a story line by line. When the referee points to a player, they must continue where the last left off. This can get quite tricky because the referee can put players on the spot in the middle of sentences, leaving the second player the responsibility of making a grammatically correct sentence. This show’s story highlighted the adventures of a boy who went to the dentist and ended up having a rather odd dream due to sleeping gas. This game truly highlights the team’s ability to think quickly while still being funny. It was a great way to end the night, and after the final tally, Camillo’s team came out on top. DieBold and her crew didn’t seem too beat up about it, though. Like any good comedy sportz player, they knew that they would have the opportunity in the next game to make their crowd combust with laughter.

ITS For Change: Habitat for Humanity

Problem: Nearly 3 million people in the United States alone every night do not have a home. The average age for those that are homeless in the United States is only nine years. 1.3 billion people worldwide live on less than $1.00 every day with no access to clean water, sanitation, or electricity.  A solution: Habitat for Humanity.

On Oct. 1, Presentation’s Community Involvement Club, Amnesty International, Peer Ministry, and the International Thespian Society (ITS) put together a mind-blowing event that will not be forgotten. This year, the annual ITS concert focused on the idea of shelter and gave special focus to Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit housing organization that concentrates on providing affordable housing for deserving impoverished families. Habitat for Humanity was founded in 1976 and has since grown to have operational locations in all 50 states of the United States and in 90 countries worldwide. With the help of incredibly selfless volunteers, over 300,000 houses worldwide have been built and this number increases every day. Their great cause makes it obvious why Habitat for Humanity was this year’s ITS pick for the concert.

Organizers took turns telling audience members the importance of affordable housing. The night started off with a solemn prayer read by Peer Ministry students, explaining that help is always there for those who need it. Amnesty International representatives spoke about the impact that homelessness has worldwide and explained the various causes of it in other countries. Their words further established the idea that no matter what the cause, homelessness is something that all of humanity can commiserate with. CI representatives explained through a beautiful presentation that when volunteers come together to build houses for families, the house becomes more than just a building; it becomes a shelter and home for people in need, which is one of the most important aspects of community work that Habitat for Humanity tries to emphasize.

The concert itself was packed with talented dancers, singers, actors and other performers, all of whom truly communicated to the audience their dedication to the stage and to providing inexpensive shelter for those in need. Jazz choir sang a beautiful Italian song from “The Mission” and the dance team performed with exceptional talent when dancing to Greg Laswell’s “Off I Go,” an emotional song that depicts the feeling of hopelessness experienced by several impoverished people across the globe. Other talented singers from both Presentation and Bellarmine sang mesmerizing songs that truly tied the event together, with voices filled with genuine emotion and dedication.

An obvious amount of effort went into producing this stunning event, with some students going above and beyond what was required for this event. Sophomore Emily Griffith wrote and composed her own song titled “Alone,” a moving song that touched the audience through both the wonderful music and the accompanying vocals provided by the composer herself and by sophomores Mandy Heiser, Morgan Locke, and Demi Pace. Senior Jennifer Greenfield also displayed an exceptional amount of commitment to the event both by creating her own arrangement to the song “Home Sweet Home” by Motley Crue and making a presentation to accompany it with statistics describing the hopelessness of being homeless. Other performers in the concert also showed amazing talent in both singing and acting.

This year’s ITS Concert for Shelter was a truly beautiful event that had talent and dedication bursting out of the seams. The concert truly showed the ever-present hope and determination that is found in each and every person at Presentation. It was an inspirational event that will motivate students to actively participate in volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and other related organizations. So now, let’s fix this problem, because with the help of everyone on campus, Presentation High School is the new solution to homelessness.