After months of work, amid hopes that the school doesn’t shut down again, the set was finally done. The crew admired the final set two weeks before opening night. Crew leaders rushed to finish everything. Plant puppets hid backstage. Everything was crazy but the set crew was solid. 

Wilder Ayer worked with the set crew on Little Shop of Horrors, Fossil Ridge Highschool’s Spring 2021 Musical. Now a Senior, Ayer’s been a part of the theater program since his freshman year, contributing to multiple productions. 

“All but one that we’ve put on [during] my time here. I was not part of Rent, but [I] did One Man, Almost, Maine. I would have done Newsies if it had gone on, I was putting all the hours for it. And then Little Shop,” Ayer said.

Ayer really enjoys the technical aspect of theater, most specifically set crew. The crew builds the stage setting and on show nights work on changing the set in between scenes when necessary.  

Even though he’s a big part of the tech, he still enjoys being under the bright lights. Almost, Maine provided him with some theater memories.    

“I was East in Rust’s cast, and my scene mate was Chloe Iverson. And then in Garner’s cast, I was Randy, and my scene partner was Benjamin Ashby,” he said. “That was my favorite part of Fossil theater because it was small. It was close. We didn’t have a lot of people like the graduating class from the year before.”

Ayer was also supposed to play Roosevelt in Newsies, but then the pandemic struck. 

During the pandemic, Ayer kept his passion for theater while doing a short film called Domonster. This short film was put on by a small group of students for a part of Wear a Mask, which was Fossil’s fall theater production during 2020. 

When Fossil students were able to come back in person, he joined the set crew for Little Shop of Horrors. The crew had to dismantle the old Newsies set that had been left in the PAC during the pandemic. 

“It felt like ripping off a bandaid, painful but necessary,” Ayer said.

With the old set pieces from the Newsies and One Man sets, they were able to salvage and reuse most of it for the Little Shop set. 

“We used a lot of the staircases from the Newsies set for the Little Shop set, as well as the platforms on the bottom. But a lot of the set was from One Man.”

Outside of school and theater, Ayer enjoys hanging out with his friends and streaming on Twitch. 

His Twitch is CedarAndSnow and he currently has 61 followers. On Twitch he streams while playing Five Night’s at Freddy’s, Splitgate, Warzone, and Minecraft. 

“I started June 2, 2019. I started streaming because I like to play video games and figured it would be fun,” Ayer said.

The meaning of his Twitch name is a nod to his childhood pet. 

“When I was growing up I had a dog named Cedar, his full name was Snow Falling on Cedars, named after the book by David Guterson so I took the name from that. Cedar was a Shilo shepherd.” 

Outside of his hobbies and school, Ayer has also been thinking about his future with careers and colleges. 

“I plan on going to college. Currently, actually, working on my application to U of M, the University of Montana in Missoula. And I plan on applying to Western Washington University in Bellingham, as well as Colorado State University here in Fort Collins.” 

He has ideas for his future with a meaning behind them.

“I want to major in psychology. I want to be a therapist or something along that route. I also want to continue to study German, which I’ve been doing for six years now. And I would like to see what I could do with therapy and outdoor education because that’s something I really enjoy.” 

With Fossil’s Fall 2021 production Rumors starting up Ayer is on the set crew once again.