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Lights, Camera, Action! SLUH Theatre Productions to Return This Fall

After a year and a half of being left vacant, St. Louis U. High’s Schulte Theatre will come back to life with the return of the Fall SLUH theatre production this coming November. 

Due to Covid restrictions, the SLUH theatre production team last year was forced to accommodate by performing plays that had either a limited audience or no audience present. To fit these new standards, the theatre team recorded the Spoon River Anthology, a series of monologues that fit together to tell the story of a small town, and presented it to the SLUH community via YouTube last February. In addition, the theatre department also put on a smaller performance of the much-beloved play Master Harold … and the Boys, which was presented to sophomores as a staged reading. 

“It was really difficult to do a staged reading,” said Whitaker. “The whole purpose was to read the play, but with masks on, it was hard to do even that.” 

However, SLUH theatre is going back to producing performances in the intended setting: on stage and in front of a live audience.

“This year, we are doing a ‘real’ show up on stage,” said McKernan. “SLUH Theatre is performing Wait Until Dark, a 1960’s-era thriller with a sort of Alfred Hitchcock feel to it.”

 Wait Until Dark centers around a young blind woman who comes into possession of a doll that, unbeknownst to her, has thousands of dollars worth of drugs hidden inside of it. Throughout the play, she is tasked with keeping the doll out of the hands of three con men, who plot to rob her of her doll in order to obtain its contents. Wait Until Dark was originally written and performed in 1966 by Frederick Knott; this play was then made into a movie the following year in 1967 starring the unforgettable Audrey Hepburn and the classic Alan Arkin. 

Art: Will Blaisdell.

Auditions for the show were held on Sept. 6 and 7 in the Schulte Theatre. To audition, no prior experience or preparation was required.

“The turnout was great,” said McKernan. “It is not a very big show, but we have a very promising cast of young men and women who are passionate about the act they put on.” 

In addition to the promising turnout in the role auditions, Director of Theater Operations Tim Moore has a gifted group of stage workers under his wing that are helping out in the construction of the set of the play. Seeing the great work that is being done on and off the stage, the SLUH theatre production team is looking forward to their performance more and more every day as the project continues to progress. 

“Right now, we are still in the ‘roughing in’ stage of development,” said Whitaker. “That means we are still working on taped floors at this moment as the crew works on the stage set. It is a very physical play with plenty of fight choreography, so the cast will have to envision a setting with proper stage props.”  

In addition, the performers will have to mind the audience they are performing in front of as it is not a typical performance but rather a studio performance.

“It’s a very intimate piece,” said Whitaker. “Not only will the actors be performing in front of a live audience again, but the audience will be right in front of them too!”

Wait Until Dark is set to premiere on Nov. 11 and will be performed through the Nov. 13 in the SLUH Schulte Theatre, however it is worth noting that the size of the audience will be limited in order to create a safe environment for both the actors and audience members.

“We, like many other high school theatres, are following the Covid safety guidelines of professional theatres in the area,” said Whitaker. 

Despite having to perform in front of a limited audience, the faculty members in charge of the production have high hopes that this performance will usher in a return to regular SLUH theatre performances and a return to the normalcy the SLUH community had before the pandemic.

“All in all, I am just glad that we will be given the opportunity to perform in front of a live audience again,” said Whitaker. “It will be an interesting experience as we have never done anything like Wait Until Dark before and I cannot wait to see what the future holds!”

 

 


 

 

 

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