January 18, 2017 at 6:22 p.m.

State stage

JCHS to compete in South Bend
State stage
State stage

By RAY COONEY
President, editor and publisher

In their seventh year of competing, the Jay County Thespians have been declared ready for the big stage.

The Jay County High School group will show off its talents Saturday in the Indiana Thespians state competition at Indiana University – South Bend with its performance of an abridged version of “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged).”

It will mark JCHS’s second performance at the state level, but the first time the school has earned its way there via its regional effort. (In 2010-11, its first year competing, Jay County got a state bid after several other schools dropped out.)

The accomplishment — JCHS advanced to state thanks to a third-place effort at the Brown County regional competition — has left the thespians with mixed feelings.

“It makes me feel awesome,” said Mackenzie Currie, who performs in the show and is also one of two student directors along with Alec Hutchison.

“Yes, and also very scared,” said Alex Denton, who has multiple roles, including playing Juliet.

Scared because this is new territory as none of the current thespians have ever competed at the state level.

Just to get there was a tall task as Jay County was originally scheduled to compete Nov. 12 at the University of Indianapolis regional. That would have given the group just a week to prepare following the school’s production of “Grease.”

“Grease took over our lives,” said director Carol Gebert, who teaches theatre and fine arts at JCHS. “So we lost all of our rehearsal time with Alec.”

Hutchison is a lead for the thespians, and also took over the lead role in “Grease” just a couple of weeks before the performances.

Thanks to some last-minute changes, JCHS was able to shift to the Brown County regional — the last of the competitions, held Dec. 3 — buying it three more weeks to prepare. It was still a quick turn-around, but it ended up being enough time.

Jay County finished third in the regional — the top three earn state berths — behind champion Maconaquah and second-place Noblesville, and Hutchison won the Stand Out Award.


At state, JCHS will also compete against regional champions Andrean, Northwestern, Penn and Carmel along with qualifiers Castle, Danville, Franklin, Brownsburg and Washington. It has already redesigned its set from regional and hopes to improve in a variety of other areas.

“We have to improve projection, confidence, articulation, at the state level, because the schools that are coming are so good,” said Gebert, noting that judging includes technical aspects (sets, costume, etc.), overall acting, projection, confidence and whether the performance met the intent of the playwright. “We can’t show up and just be there. We have to be a competitor.”

“A good state theatre performance, I believe, needs a lot of motivation and energy, plus a lot of anticipation before the actual show,” added Currie.

The show includes an introduction from Lee Habegger, Hutchison and Denton, followed by a Shakespeare biography from Currie and then “an abridged and ridiculous version of Romeo and Juliet.”

The full show, which the thespians will perform in March at JCHS, also includes all of the Shakespearean comedies mashed into one and all of the playwright’s tragedies, including forward and backward versions of “Hamlet.”

Denton enjoys the freedom that the show can offer.

“I like that sometimes if we find an ad-lib, and we like it enough, we just throw it in,” he said. “We just have to find the right place for it.”

Each school has the state stage for just 40 minutes, during which thespians must assemble their set, perform their 30-minute show and strike the set.

The thespians — Lynsey Leeson, Alexis Wisener, Catherine Stafford, Keith Rinker, Cera Batt, Mashelle Hale, Faith Fisher, Hutchison, Currie, Denton and Habegger — will have a couple of chances to warm up in preparation for Saturday. They will perform a show for the public at 7 p.m. Thursday and then will put their talents on display for the school on Friday.

The group will then head north Friday evening in preparation for taking the stage early Saturday morning.

“We hope to show up, represent Jay County to the best of our ability and hopefully beat somebody,” said Gebert. “That’s always the goal.”
 
PORTLAND WEATHER

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