Musicals usually consist of catchy songs, costumes, dialogue, and dance sequences. However, Carlmont decided to take these components to the next level for this year’s spring musical.
Students at Carlmont High School performed “Into the Woods” for the annual musical.
Opening night was on Friday, Feb. 8, and the play went until Sunday, Feb. 10 in the Carlmont Performing Arts Center.
Last year, Carlmont performed “The Wedding Singer.” However, according to many of the students who contributed to the play, “Into the Woods” was more complex than “The Wedding Singer.”
“The music itself is so much more harder and complex because the play is so vocal based, and the show is so much more complex content-wise than ‘The Wedding Singer’ last year,” said Emily Livesay, a sophomore who played the role of Cinderella’s mother and Sleeping Beauty. “We had to get through so much, and ‘Into the Woods’ had a lot of things going on at once, so it can be hard to know what is going on 100 percent of the time.”
The weeks leading up to the musical were tense and daunting for most of the cast. Because of this, a few cast members found ways to calm down the rest of the cast.
“I mostly just have adrenaline in my body rather than fear due to the years I’ve spent in the theater. For those who do feel fear, they usually take deep breaths,” said Clarisse Bell, a freshman who played the role of the baker’s wife. “All actors have small warmups either to become calm or for getting energized. These exercises are not only beneficial but also incredibly fun.”
Similar to the actors, the orchestra also felt a significant amount of stress.
Last year’s musical was also a more dance-reliant musical, while “Into the Woods” was more music-reliant. This put more emphasis on the orchestra.
“The musical this year contains more complex music that requires more instruments than we’ve had in the previous years,” said Alison Scibour, a senior who has worked in the orchestra for the past few musicals. “Our previous musicals didn’t have that big of an orchestration, but this year’s musical requires many instruments and is much harder to play than previous years.”
According to the cast, rehearsals usually created a professional and focused environment, but the cast still tried to find ways to keep everyone’s spirits up.
“The work environment is generally lighthearted. We keep spirits high with jokes,” said Rory McGann, a sophomore who played the role of Jack in the Beanstalk. “However, when we get down to tech week, we get very serious. We get professional during shows too.”
Along with the cast and the orchestra, CTTA was also working backstage. The process of creating the stage and props was long and time-consuming.
“We had to do quite a bit of prep work finding wood, drilling holes, and cutting wood to make the platform,” said Keya Arora, a freshman. “This all took about six weekend work days each about six to eight hours.”
However, the hard work of the play did not go unnoticed by the audience.
“The play was carried out really well. It was a different story and thus conveyed different morals which were interesting to me,” said Jessica Liu, a sophomore. “Last year’s musical included more props, but I could really hear the pit orchestra more clearly this year.”
Despite the pressure of performing a more difficult play, the cast felt that they worked hard to perform to the best of their ability.
“All my fellow actors seemed to really put full effort in,” Bell said. “You can clearly see that everyone in the room has a passion, and it helps the show move very nicely.”
