2 Blueprint
NEWS
Oct. 28, 2016
‘Moon Over Buffalo’ brings fun times and chaos to DGS By Gina DeCarlis, Online Features Editor Love, humor and catastrophe are all words that can describe the fall play this year. “Moon Over Buffalo,” written by Ken Ludwig, is a comedy about a couple, an actress and a director, who end up in a huge mess after trying to impress a widely renowned movie director. The audience gets to experience both the humor and the couple’s rocky adventures in show business. The DGS production of “Moon Over Buffalo” is Friday and Saturday evening at 7:00 p.m. on Nov. 4 and 5. Tickets are free for students this year. Tiffany Rubin is the play director for this production and has been a director for nearly 11 years. She shared her opinion on the play. “It’s a crazy comedy about a husband-wife team of fading stars who are performing together with their theater company in Buffalo, New York in the 1950’s,” Rubin said. “It is a fun, slap-sticky comedy, lots of mistaken identities, doors opening and closing quickly. We haven’t had one of these comedies at our school in a while, and I think the kids will have fun doing it.” There were about 70 students who auditioned for the fall and winter play combined. Tiffany Rubin and Nathaniel Haywood carefully decided which
student should be in which show and proceeded with callbacks. Rubin describes the process of choosing the right student for each role. “When students audition, we have a chart of characters for each of our plays, and as we watch them perform their monologues, if we see potential for a student to play a specific character, or more than one character, we make a note of that on our charts. If our plays call for something specialized [like an accent, being able to play a musical instrument, etc.] we ask the students about that at the initial audition or have them try to speak with that accent,” Rubin said. “At callbacks, we ask the students to read from the scripts [of] our plays to see if they’d be a good fit for a character and how well they interact [and] have chemistry with each other.” Senior Jenna Riadi is cast as the female lead in the play. Riadi has been involved in theater for most of her high school career. She talks about her role in the play. “I play Charlotte Hay, who is an actress in her husband’s theater company. My character is supposed to act as a lead role in her husband’s play, but a lot of things go wrong in that process. But my character does a lot of physical stuff on stage like hitting and running around and stuff. My character also has a lot of great one liners,” Riadi said.
Senior female lead Jenna Riadi and Junior male lead Jonah Ocuto reherse an intense duel between their two characters.
Photo by Gina DeCarlis
Riadi typically auditions for roles that she thinks she would enjoy. She described a little bit about her character and why she auditioned. “She is feisty and incredibly witty. She has dry humor which makes up most of the jokes in the play. I can relate to this character a lot. She’s definitely an independent woman, but she’s also a little full of herself,” Riadi said. “What made me want to audition was that I’ve been in drama club for three years. I wanted to have a good role for my last main stage play in drama club.” In order to bring these characters to life, it takes hours of practice and
memorization. Rubin talks about how often they rehearse. “Once rehearsals begin, we practice every day for about 4-5 weeks, depending on the school calendar for that year. Rehearsals usually run for about 2-3 hours for the first couple of weeks and then late into the evenings once we get closer to tech week,” Rubin said. The DGS drama department has been working hard at perfecting their production of this year’s fall play. The cast and crew of “Moon Over Buffalo” hopes that their hard work pays off as they bring their practice to the stage in November.
The Marching Mustangs place out of this world compete at that level. That means treating every rehearsal like a performance and raising the standards On Oct. 15 the DGS marching for ourselves every day,” Tyrrell said. band traveled down to the UniverIn order to prepare for the comsity of Illinois for their fifth competi- petition, the band practiced every tion this season. The band placed Tuesday and Thursday from 6:00 to second in their 6A class, 4th overall 9:00 p.m. The Marching Mustangs and also won the best overall drum also used Friday night football majors award this year. games and prior competitions as The band has continued to place additional practice. Tyrrell shared in the top three at this competiwhat a typical band practice consists tion over the past three years. With of. strong competitors such as Lockport, “We’ll spend the first half hour or Prospect and Marian Catholic High so doing basic marching warm-ups school, senior Olivia Tyrrell exand playing warm-ups, and then plained her expectations going into we’ll break out into groups to learn the competition. choreography, clean certain parts of “Preparing for the U of I competithe show or work on music. We usution is mainly about getting into ally spend at least the last hour or the mind-set and focus necessary to more on a full ensemble coordination rehearsal,” Tyrrell said. The band spent July and August learning their eight-minute long show. This performance consists of 73 different places the band members have to memorize and march to on the field while playing their instruments. Their show is titled “Cosmic,” and Senior Emily White, Junior Jake Burrows, Junior Priya Patel, and because of all the Senior Gisselle Cervantes accept the overall drum majors award. hard work they Photo courtesy of Gisselle Cervantes put in, senior By Tessa Brown, Print Entertainment Editor
The Marching Mustangs spell out their performance title, “Cosmic,” as they dominate the field at the University of Illinois.
Photo courtesy of Gisselle Cervantes Emily White described how excited the band is to compete. “This year the band has a huge craving for performing, so whenever we perform in front of an audience, the band does a great job of turning it on and putting on a good show,” White said. Head Band Director Craig Roselieb explained what he feels the band’s biggest strengths are when it comes to competing this year. “We have 42 seniors in the band, which makes it a really strong group. We have great section leaders
and drum majors that lead the band, so the students really take charge of the energy level and the attitude at rehearsals, which is nice. And we have a great show,” Roselieb said. Since the band’s competition at U of I, the marching band is scheduled to compete at four more competitions. Using their strengths to the best of their abilities, all 142 members of the band hope to put on an amazing show for every performance.