Cherry Hill High School East - Eidolon Yearbook (Cherry Hill, NJ)

Page 208 text:

Any alert student can discern when its Show Time at East — a select portion of the student body staggers around school exhausted from hours of hard work and lack of sleep. They fall asleep during physics tests and have delayed responses to all but the simplest of questions. Exactly who are these people, these “martyrs of the stage,” you may ask. Well, they are East’s talented and dedicated actors, actresses, musi- cians, stage, and costume crew members. To- gether, these students and an equally dedicated ensemble of teachers, spend long hours at school building the show. There are endless preparations to be made. Students and teachers spend their time rehearsing lines, blocking scenes, building props, fitting costumes, prac- ticing music and then doing it over again and again and again! Each aspect of the show is perfected individually. Slowly the parts merge. Scenery is added. Scripts are discarded during rehearsals. The actors and actresses perform in costume instead of T-shirts and sweatpants, and Mr. Mckenzie’s piano playing is replaced with Mr. Yurko’s Pit Orchestra. The hours are long, the work exhausting, the pay nonexistent. But when the curtain goes up and the show begins, it’s all worth it.

Page 210 text:

Without the production and technical crews, the presentation of Funny Girl would not be possible. There are many people involved with coordinat- ing and bringing the musical to life. The stage crew is in charge of the lighting, props, spotlights, and microphones and they help to bring alive and enhance the sights and sounds of the show. Cos- tumes and make-up are essential parts of the pre- sentation. Long hours are spent trying to decide which clothing fits the storyline and which colors look best on stage. Make-up artists must select the right hues and shades to illuminate the faces of the actors and dancers. Choreography is an- other important part of the production. The dancers work hard to learn the routines and per- form them in unison. The set designers and build- ers must go through weeks of planning in order to create the right scenery. They then construct the elaborate sets and, along with the stage crew, learn how to operate them and conduct quick changes between scenes. None of these produc- tion groups can work alone and they must all collaborate and consult with each other. The strength of the musical is in its parts as well as in sum product. Then, together with the actors and musicians, they join to form a successful and professional production of Funny Girl.