A typical Advanced Acting production includes everything from elaborate set designs, to intricate lighting-cues, and a grand stage. This semester, however, the class’s seniors are leaving all of these accessories behind and going back to the basics one final time, to perform the play Grown Ups in their blackbox classroom.
This change in scenery has required the group to adapt to both the production style and structure of performing in a new space.
“The black box theater is in the round, so that is a whole new experience for us as actors and as directors. We’ve had to learn how to navigate that space,” senior Dahlia Saffouri said. “We’ve had to block the scenes based on the stage design, whereas typically the stage design is built off of what we are doing.”
Saffouri said while the actors have had to adjust to the new space, there are advantages to the theater being in the round, a space in which the audience surrounds the stage from all sides. This layout has forced the team to continue asking new questions and stay creative.
“I don’t think [we’re] giving up anything. If anything, it’s making us stronger as actors and directors,” Saffouri said.
Senior Benjamin Sachs said he also recognizes the advantages and impacts of a black box theater production like Grown Ups, specifically the environment it creates.
“We sacrifice all of the technology we’d normally get in a theater, all of the lighting, all of the sound, but you get that intimate experience in the black box,” Sachs said.
The nature of the black box production isn’t the only unique aspect about the play. Grown Ups is a show directed and designed by PHS seniors Friedie Schickedanz and Jake Hanke. The two co-directors are in charge of everything, from blocking to set design.
“It’s been really fun to work with Jake and my ideas together about what we can do in an immersive situation,” Schickedanz said. “[Ms.Taylor] is very much there and she’s been really helpful in giving us a lot of guidance in terms of what it actually takes to direct a play, because that’s a hard thing to do. Hard but rewarding.”
Saffouri said that working not only alongside, but under the direction of her peers, has been an incredibly rewarding, collaborative experience.
“It’s been really fun to work with all of my friends and just build off of one another, because we are so comfortable with each other already that it makes it so easy for us to really fully immerse ourselves in the rehearsal space and give everything we’ve got,” Saffouri said. “Even when we’re not feeling it, we are constantly bringing up the energy and we’re just always having a really great time.”
Schickedanz said that she’s looking forward to the creative liberties she and Hanke are taking with the play, as well as curating the unique experience they’re able to offer audiences due to the use of the black box theater.
“I think we’re both excited to be working with each other and on a project as exciting as this one. We’re all learning together, especially Jake and I. We’re learning alongside each other, figuring out what our roles are, figuring out what we want this play to look like,” Schickedanz said.
What exactly Grown Ups looks like is a process that is continually in the works, and while the directors couldn’t disclose much about the storyline of the play, it’s centered around a group of camp counselors working at Indigo Woods sleepaway camp over the summer.
Hanke said the play closely follows the five camp counselors during their summer spent together, focusing on their reactions to chaotic national events ensuing around them.
“Because it’s immersive, you don’t know where it’s going to go and you just are kind of along for the ride with the characters. You can feel their energy, you’re in the same space as them,” Schickedanz said.
After sharing a space with the actors in the black box, Saffouri said she hopes the audience gains a deeper, more complex understanding of theater.
“I hope that people take away that there’s so many different types of performance,” Saffouri said. “Theater isn’t just comedic or dramatic, it can be a mix of both and there’s a way that the audience can get immersed in the story both emotionally and physically with specific modern techniques.”
