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SING! MUSICAL THEATER SHINES AT GHS Contributed by: Jayelynn Graham, GHS Sophomore
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right lights, closed curtains, and students forming extraordinary bonds with people that don’t exist. You have entered musical theatre. Between the theater arts teacher, Morgan Sims, and the GHS Choral director, Matthew Whitson, this devoted group of thespians have quite an amazing opportunity. Each year, actors, actresses, singers, technicians, and set-builders come together to create a few nights of art on stage at the GISD Auditorium. The incredible part is that they are all students. They learn how to build sets that look as beautiful from the cheap seats as from the front row. They run lighting, sound equipment, microphones, and spotlights – all to make the story come alive. They spend months after school and on weekends rehearsing until each and every performance is just right. “Musical theatre has another element there,” senior Tramera Bymum said. “It’s combining two very powerful art forms and creating something wonderful. It's almost as though everything my character went through, I had somehow also gone through in another lifetime.” While productions look near perfect when the curtain opens, merging these two fine arts brings many challenges. It can be difficult to show the value in using choral techniques to thespians, just as it is challenging to bring choral students out of their shells in front of an audience. Despite these roadblocks, actors and musicians always seem to get to the other side with help from their directors. “The most rewarding part is getting to see students enjoy music,” Whitson said. “Once we get past the note-learning, we get to really dive into how the composer has written the music, along with the meaning of the poetry. It helps convey the emotions to the audience.” Adding music into the mix also creates deep connections among the members of the company. Many of the students in the program feel music plays a large part in shaping them into the people they are today. “It's not about connecting yourself to a character,” junior Whitney Dosher said, “it's about living inside of them.” “When you tell stories with music, the energy within the space is so intense,” Sims said. “The emotions of both the actors on stage and the members in the audience are so much more heightened because music does that for people.” Although the current world situation has presented many obstacles for these performers, they continue to rise. They have masked up and put their game faces on for this year's virtual thespian festival. They have also moved forward with their annual fall production while still holding tightly to the welfare of the actors and their families. Fortunately, we can still safely say, “There’s magic in the theater, and the theater is magic!”
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• Gainesville SPOT SPOTlight light • Winter 2020
