For the drama department at Fossil, Spring is a busy and exciting time of year. With the big school musical both techies and actors experience long, stressful hours, missed sleep, and no free time, so why do they do it? “Everyone is really committed, and it’s going really well and I like a lot of the people” says Junior Caroline Frevert.  In the midst of crazy testing and spring sports the student body tends to forget that the theater department is spending three hours every day together so that they can entertain our Fossil community.

Theater means something to them, otherwise why would they do it? The behind the scenes aspect of theater could even be considered to rival those of sports teams. Sophomore, Ryan Clark who has participated in both sports and theater says “You have to put in a lot more hours and a certain amount of months [for theater], so if it’s a month for a play, sports is about five or six hours a day, but you get off seasons where you get more free time.” Students at Fossil pick theater over sports for a variety of reasons Sophomore Sophie Contino says “I kind of missed the boat for team sports when I was little because I didn’t start when I was little so I never got good at them. Then I was really good at track but I couldn’t do it because it’s the same time as the musical and the musical is my priority.” Contino felt that in terms of sports or theater they were pretty much equal “It [theater] is more intensive whereas sports might be spread out over three or four months, I feel like theater is more condensed, like more time each day.” she later added “Theater takes up a lot of your time even though people don’t know it.”

Caroline Frevert also finds the number of hours surprising “On Friday we were here from when we got to school till like 9:30.” Many students at Fossil aren’t totally aware of what the drama department calls ‘hell week’. Professionally known as tech week, the week leading up to the show both techies and actors stay after school everyday and run the show. After getting notes and working out all the problems every night actors are released at about 9:30 or 10pm and repeat the next day. In total for that one week the students are there about 48 hours, not including the three months of rehearsal prior to the show.

Theater is an extracurricular that although it requires long hours draws in all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. Junior Caroline Frevert tried out for the school musical because she loved broadway and stage plays so much that she thought she’d give it a try. Freshman Adri Blum tried out for West Side Story because she’s been a dancer for a long time and she hoped that theater would help her improve her dancing. Sophomore Sophie Contino was in last year’s musical as well as West Side Story and got involved in high school theater since she started performing in dinner theaters at a young age “High school theater seemed like a logical next thing to do” says Contino.

Theater is a whole group of diverse people who joined for all different reasons but what they all do have in common is a passion to create a great show. Long hours help them not only create a great product but also built unity over common interests. Senior Sean Wilke-braun says “My favorite thing about theater is the fantastic collaborative effort you get to have. I mean we essentially have a family of fifty people all working to make this one massive, fantastic thing and it’s such a wonderful experience.”