- Patrick Carlson ’21
This fall, SHP’s drama department will be putting on the musical comedy, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”. The musical is based on a fictional spelling bee that takes place in the Putnam Valley Middle School. The directing, preparation, and performance of our drama club has been spectacular in the past, and the upcoming play will hopefully live up to the standards that have been set. “The play looks really good this year, it is supposed to be really fun and there is a fairly good amount of students participating this year,” says Aidan Pereira.
Aidan, a junior who has been involved in drama at Sacred Heart, is one of the more experienced actors and believes that the play this fall will indeed live up to its expectations. In fact, he is impressed by the number of students that have shown interest in participating in the play as well as the drama program this year. Auditions will be held on the 4th and 5th of September and he is excited to see how they will play out. This year, another actor, Huck Barry, will be filling the role of a student director. This means that the play will be almost fully student-run. It will be interesting to see how the power in the hands of the students participating will affect the overall turnout of the play. Those in the SHP drama community are optimistic that the increase of student power will increase engagement by the actors, directors, and crew.
The arts and athletics division interviewed drama insider Ned Stone and asked his thoughts on the upcoming musical. Here is how he responded: “As someone who has previously performed in the school’s musicals and plays, I am always interested to see how they will turn out. This year will be especially interesting as there are new drama and choir teachers. With a whole new set of faculty to lead the production, I expect it could be completely different from what we’ve seen in the past.”
We also asked if he had any interesting information he could relay about the musical. He said “An interesting piece of news about “The Spelling Bee” is that it will not be performed in our high school performing arts center. It will be performed in the Middle School Ravi building and the middle schoolers will have their production at the high school fine arts center. While this may seem like it could be a downgrade, the production team has a lot of different ideas that they are excited to try out down there.”
To all those who are in the musical, we wish you luck in the coming months and we eagerly await when we will be able to watch your performance.
Photo from Santa Clara University
