Winman Drama Club ready to take you to Neverland

By Kelcy Dolan
Posted 3/10/16

Second star to the right and straight on till morning you will find Neverland, where the Winman Junior High Drama Club will stage “Peter Pan.”

The school held auditions for …

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Winman Drama Club ready to take you to Neverland

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Second star to the right and straight on till morning you will find Neverland, where the Winman Junior High Drama Club will stage “Peter Pan.”

The school held auditions for the production in October and have been practicing ever since. Since February vacation the students have been practicing nearly every day after school. With such a short time after school to practice, each day is broken up to specific scenes so that students can plan their time for other department nights.

The Drama Club offers students numerous outlets to get involved, with positions for actors, backstage crew, lighting and even the set design club.

Kristine Gervais, the school’s choral director and one of the directors for the Drama Club, said that theater offers something for everyone.

“No matter how students get involved, theatre brings out their talents,” she said. “Students like to feel a part of something even if they don’t want to be in the spotlight. It takes many kinds of people to make a show successful.”

The set design club, a faction of the overall Drama Club, has come together after school with the help of Michael Harwood, a teacher in the visual arts department. The volunteers have created large sets for the Lost Boys’ Cave, Captain Hook’s ship, the nursery and Mermaid Lagoon all after school.

Because so many of the students wanted parts on stage, Gervais and Nadine Priest, the show’s directors, created new parts for the show.

Originally, the parts of the St. Bernard overseer, Nana, was just some noise off stage and Tinkerbell was just a light with bell noises. Now, those parts have students playing them. Similarly, the play has added narration in the form of a mother reading to her children.

The leads of the play are Berit Olsson, who will be performing as Wendy Darling, Liam Roberts as the infamous Captain Hook and Aidan LeBlanc as Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up.

Over the past couple of years Winman’s productions have been very successful, which might attribute to the growing interest in the Drama Club. Gervais believes having Scott Elementary students come visit the school to see the performance has helped as well.

“Those sixth graders see the show and they get excited to move to junior high and be a part of the show themselves,” Gervais said. “‘Cinderella’ last year went really well so we have a lot of students come back this year.”

Priest said, “’Peter Pan’ is a popular story, one everyone knows and loves.”

“Peter Pan” is recognizable with lovable characters, but its also different from what the school has done in the past.

In the last two years Winman has done “Cinderella” and The Snow Queen, both of which focuses on a female lead, princesses. This year both Gervais and Priest wanted to focus on a male lead, to have their talent at the forefront.

Gervais mentioned too that there are “quite a few” young male students in the cast this year, where typically many of them stay behind the scenes. Still, the majority of the cast is female, but the characters in the show allow for some discrepancy in gender.

“It’s all really coming together,” Gervais said. “The students are getting excited. They all take a lot of pride in the final product, as they should.”

Winman’s production of Peter Pan will be this Friday, March 11th starting at 7 p.m. in the Winman Auditorium, 575 Centerville Road. Tickets are $7 at the door and children under 5 can attend for free.

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