Students staging production of The Three Musketeers
There were three musketeers, and look how famous they became. Imagine if there were twice as many.
Six is the number of student directors working together to gallantly swashbuckle the Prince George secondary school production of The Three Musketeers, based on the classic Alexandre Dumas adventure story.
Each of them is also an actor in the production, as if leading the show as a committee weren’t enough of a double-duty.
The six are Cassidy Brunn, Sloane Vasko, Matthew Kipling and Ryder Anderson from Grade 12 and Alexandra Henson and Jodi Cahoose from Grade 11. The cast has a total of 21 actors playing 31 parts, plus the backstage and effects crew.
They are all working under senior drama teacher Kevin O’Brien, but these six are in the school’s Direction & Scriptwriting class so he offers general guidance and quality control while they do the practical work of bringing this play off the page.
“They are so motivated. They have taken amazing leadership initiative this year,” said O’Brien. Each semester presents a different class composition, but this one is unprecedented, he added.
“We’ve sold our souls to theatre,” said Brunn, who has done just about everything that high school drama programs can offer.
“I felt like I’d reached a stalemate in the acting I could do at the school and I wanted to go beyond that. I’d seen other student directors fall apart or fail, so I knew this was a challenge and I knew I could help change that outcome and be part of a student director success. I wanted to get a turn at it because after all I’ve learned here, I felt ready and prepared to have a positive experience.”
Vasko has also had a long history of PGSS drama, and directing was the next logical step in her own mind.
“I love theatre. I’m going to UVic to take it in university. This is what I want to do with my life,” Vasko said. “I really like being in control of the overall vision of a play. That’s something I need to work on to become a better actor. Being a director helps you be an actor, and being directed by others helps you be a better actor. I feel lucky to get all these experiences here.”
Kipling said there’s a conflict of interest in being the only director and also acting in a show. He is thankful for the group environment.
“Most of us haven’t done this before,” he said. “I wanted to try it out – voice my opinion on how a scene should look, but I wanted the other directors and also the actors to have their input on the scenes as well. I love the collaborative aspect of it.”
Anderson has experience directing for the small screen. He has conscripted his friends and family into hobby films he’s shot on his private time.
He wanted to learn the liveaction on-stage side of the craft.
“Since this is my last year at high school, I had to get this experience now,” he said. “This is the climax of my theatre career and I think we’ve done a good job of creating the environment for the drama industry within our school. We’re leaving it in good shape for the next class.”
Cahoose and Henson represent that succession plan. The success of one class doesn’t automatically pass on to the next semester; there has to be some form of continuity, and the two younger student directors are it.
“This was all about getting outside of my comfort zone,” Cahoose said. “I’d acted before, so I had a little experience with being on stage. And I’d seen how different directors had done things. You hear about the ways some directors did things better or not as well, and I wanted to push what actors can do, and push what students can do as directors.”
For Henson it was about making informed decisions.
“I wanted to see if I liked the acting side or the directing side better,” she said.
“I wanted to find out about the different sides of theatre, because I know I love this world but I have to find my place in it.”
They have collectively had a hand in everything from sewing costumes from material they found at thrift stores to pounding conduit pipes into swords. Theatre is an all-hands-on-deck kind of activity, where the star actors have to instantly switch into menial labour mode as soon as they get offstage between scenes, and a lighting tech might be required to quack like a duck from stage left or throw on a helmet to be a silent knight in a courtier scene. O’Brien said the cast and crew (not all of whom are students in the class, some were conscripted into action by friends in the production or volunteered out of personal interest) usually arrive at his threshold with some prior knowledge gleaned in younger grades.
“By the time I get them, life is good,” he said. “Shannon Schinkel (fellow PGSS drama teacher) does such a great job preparing them in junior theatre that they are ready for this level. I have to adjust the lessons every semester, I have to teach to what the kids know. This class, I have students who have done little else but theatre in their lives, so it’s a special production they are putting together.”
The PGSS production of The Three Musketeers happens at Vanier Hall from Tuesday to Friday with a 7 p.m. performance each night, plus a 12:20 p.m. show on Thursday and a 8:50 a.m. show on Friday.
The public is invited to attend.