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Stafford High School students make their way through end-of-year theater production

May 21, 2004 1:09 am

Editor's Note: Free Lance-Star reporter Adele Uphaus and photographer Mike Morones followed the Stafford Senior High School end-of-the-year theater production from auditions through opening night.

IT'S 2:30 p.m. The spring afternoons have gotten increasingly warm and sunny. Most of Stafford Senior High School has dispersed. But in the drama classroom, a group of students is convening.

Despite their differences, there is one thing that keeps them after school these spring afternoons.

It's theater.

Thousands of high schools around the country put on splashy end-of-the-year productions. It's an annual rite of passage.

But for these Stafford teenagers, this isn't just any end-of-the-year production. It's their end-of-the-year production, "She Stoops to Conquer," an 18th-century comedy of class, manners and mistaken identity by Oliver Goldsmith.

On the first day of auditions, they gather in the cavernous auditorium before a barren stage, waiting for instructions from Tom Clark, the director.

Despite its vast dimensions, the auditorium and the classroom that adjoins it, with its posters of London's South Bank (home of Shakespeare's Globe Theater) and banners from wins at past competitions, doesn't intimidate these kids.

Rather, it's where they feel safe and where they're all friends.

When senior Katelyn Cowen's family has to put their dog to sleep one day, everyone gathers around her to stroke her hair and rub her shoulder. Sophomore Austin Dolan is always getting his reddish hair tousled by two senior girls. Sophomore Josh Hardcastle and senior Sarah Perkins jokingly call each other "lovah," a nod to a Saturday Night Live sketch about hippie college professors.

The theater room is also where the teacher/student relationship softens. Clark is more like a father caring for a brood of ducklings than a teacher reigning over a classroom dictatorship. He jokes with them, telling Austin he needs to take his Ritalin, and they joke back, telling him he should go to France to learn how to be a gentleman.

Clark has sandy hair, speaks quickly and strides around with a purpose. He calls the kids "Guys, guys, guys" and tells them to "sit, sit, sit."

Excitement buzzes in the auditorium. The students pour over scripts and try out clipped, upper-class British accents.

Sarah, who favors black and Evanescence T-shirts and is on the 11th chapter of a vampire romance novel she's writing, says theater has been her passion since she was 3 years old and would mock people on TV.

Senior Kristin Havrilla, who's going to enter Virginia Commonwealth University as a theater performance major next fall, said she used to wake her mother up in the middle of the night by pretending to be Dorothy and crying because she wasn't in Kansas anymore.

For a play like "She Stoops," which is not modern or a musical, "You get the diehards," Clark says.

Among this group of kids, there is young love--the intense kind where the couple speaks only to each other in dark corners, preening each other like a pair of birds; the light-hearted kind that involves flirting and mock fighting; the heartbreaking kind that causes lips to tremble and tears to fall.

Junior Doug Andrews, who's trying out with his girlfriend of one year, senior Briana Henty, to whom he's constantly attached by hand or arm or lips, says he can't do a British accent--he can do only a cheesy Sean Connery.

"I love it!" Clark shouts. "Do that!"

After two hours, auditions appear to be winding down. Clark shuffles his papers. But there's still one girl standing in the shadows, away from the golden glow of the stage lights.

"Oh, Monica, I didn't see you there," he says, noticing her.

She is Monica Spencer, a sophomore. She has shoulder-length brown hair and is wearing a Lion King T-shirt. When not doing anything else, she shifts from foot to foot and keeps one hand protectively pressed against her hip bone.

She says she got into theater only last year, but she's "addicted to it." Her favorite play is Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing." She loves a funny character with an eccentric trait.

She reads for Clark in her low, rich voice. He puts a star next to her name.

"She's tried out for every play this year," he says. "Her heart's in the right place."

The story of "She Stoops" revolves around Mr. Hardcastle, who has just promised his daughter, Kate, in marriage to Mr. Marlow.

Marlow is a timid youth around ladies of his own social stature, but around maids and bar wenches, he's bawdy and unreserved. Learning this, Kate disguises herself as a maid to see what her betrothed is really like.

The story also involves Mrs. Hardcastle's attempt to marry her spoiled son, Tony Lumpkin, to her niece, Miss Constance Neville, who is in love with Marlow's friend Hastings.

Clark has cast Doug and Briana as Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle. He has cast another couple--senior John Hewitt and Katelyn, both good-looking, well-dressed and funny--as Marlow and Kate Hardcastle.

With casting complete, the students gather in the drama classroom for a first read-through.

The original play is probably four to five hours long, Clark explains. To accommodate today's attention spans, it will be cut down to two. But today, they are reading the original script all the way through.

"Gimme what you've got," says Clark, perched on a chair before the class.

They begin to slog through.

Monica has been cast as a character called Aminadab.

"I'm not sure what my character is," she says, tentatively. "I'll have to figure it out."

When she finds out she gets to be in a funny scene set in a tavern called The Three Pigeons, her eyes light up.

As they wade through the script, stumbling over words like "bustard" and "quotha," a bare skeleton of plot and character starts to take shape.

Puckish Austin has latched onto Tony Lumpkin's twitching, whining, spoiled nature.

John, who wears an excess of gel to create his spiky hairdo (Clark says a person could cut his or her hand on it), conveys Marlow's pompousness around servants and nervousness around well-born ladies.

Senior Layton Kuchinski portrays the degree of smarminess appropriate for a character named Stingo.

Clark is giddy about the play, chuckling in anticipation of scenes he remembers as funny, but attention among the kids begins to flag.

There's a stifled snicker when Marlow describes Tony Lumpkin as an "awkward booby." Cell phones ring imperiously and kids scamper outside to answer them.

Layton opens a fat textbook on her desk. Tenth-grader Marcus Salley puts on headphones. Layton falls asleep.

Doug and Briana are onstage rehearsing the first scene.

Clark tells them to put down their scripts and go through the scene in their own words, without leaving anything out.

"Look and start to connect with the other person on stage," he says.

It's like a lifeline has been cut, and now they're floundering in deep waters.

Silence. Doug mumbles and smiles nervously. Briana shakes her head, swishing her dark, shoulder-length hair around, teetering on pink high-heeled Candies.

"Think of something," Clark says, not helping them out.

They slouch and twitch and shift.

"You guys, this is pretty horrifying," Clark says. "Clearly, you've just been reading and not thinking about what you read."

He gives them five minutes to look at the script and figure out what they missed.

"If this seems difficult, it is," he tells them. "I want to see the love there."

"Like in real life," Katelyn sing-songs, and Doug pretends to choke her.

But this time around, he tenderly touches Briana's arm when his character tells hers that he's fond of an old wife. Briana's Mrs. Hardcastle be-comes flirtatious and peevish, pouting a little when she doesn't get her way.

Clark is pleased.

"That's 100 percent better," he says. "I'm starting to see a genuine marriage there."

Audrey Coldron, one of Clark's former teachers from England, is here today to help with character work.

She lives in Yorkshire and listens with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to the side.

The students have broken up to work in groups. John wanders across stage confused about what scene they're running through.

Every day, his trademark line is: "Hey, what are we doing?" But when he's on task, he makes everyone howl.

Coldron instructs John and Josh on how men in the 18th century would stand and sit, trying to dispel of their awkward teenager stances.

When standing, their hands would be tucked into their waistcoats. When sitting, they'd lean back and talk across a distance.

"I want to see masculinity," she says. Sarah hides a smirk with her script.

In the back of the auditorium, Clark is working with Austin and the bar wenches for the scene in The Three Pigeons.

He wants to see flirtation.

"There's a story with these girls that the author hasn't put into the lines," he says. "I know it's hard to flirt with Austin."

Monica stands around with her toes pointed in, smiling nervously, shifting back and forth. When they're waiting for Clark to return, she leaves the space of one chair between herself and Austin.

Clark tells her to play the sloshy drunk, which makes her giggle. She is supposed to sob despairingly when reminded of her lower-class status, then be ecstatically happy the next minute.

"Really belt out that first sob. Keep crying, cry, cry cry!" he says.

She does--she really yelps it. Her contrast of sloppy, drunken tears and giddiness makes Clark laugh.

She knows all her lines when others are still glued to their scripts, and when praised, her smile is huge and wide like a Cheshire cat.

It's dress rehearsal. They are wearing their costumes: wigs, vests, jackets, knee breeches and lacy cravats for the boys, wide skirts in rose and yellow and cerulean and pine, stomachers, three-quarter sleeves and fans for the girls.

Kristin and senior Lisa Martus saunter out on stage, shaking their hips, which have been exaggerated by hoop skirts.

John, usually so comfortable in his jeans and T-shirts, looks awkward in teal short trousers and white knee socks. But he's still wearing bright white sneakers.

Doug and Briana are having a little tiff as they take their pose for the first scene, he seated in a chair, she leaning over him.

She taps him with her fan.

"Don't hit me!" he says.

"Don't bite me!" she responds.

Later, she sits on a sofa, fanning herself. Doug comes to sit beside her and touches her back, but she won't look at him. She yawns.

John is carrying a meter stick to stand in for a walking stick.

"This is very uncolonial," he says to Josh. "The meter had not been adopted until the French Revolution."

Kristin and Lisa are munching on Pringles. They use the chips to fashion duck bills and quack in each other's faces.

Sitting in the audience, Clark snaps his fingers, trying to speed up entrances.

Backstage, Lisa loudly whispers to Kristin, "Is this where I go on?"

Briana drags Austin on by the ear for one scene, pauses, forgets her line and has to drag him back off again.

By the last scene, everyone is forgetting lines and trailing off into silence.

"No, you guys, take this back to where you started messing up," Clark snaps.

It's one week until the performance.

A dusting of students and parents are huddled in the chilly auditorium.

Stately harpsichord music plays as Doug and Briana walk out and take their places for the first scene, in front of the painted backdrop of a fireplace and mantel that was completed only the day before and looks it.

But, like the girls' 18th-century hairstyles, which rise in towering masses of glossy curls and ringlets, the whole play has coalesced and has a glittering, opening-night sheen.

John adds extra layers of smarminess to Marlow's interaction with Kate Hardcastle, disguised as a bar maid. Josh's Hastings has suddenly become a whiny-voiced fop, continually fluttering a handkerchief. Sarah has given Constance Neville's fan a language of its own. Austin is all trouble-making twitchiness.

Before the show, Clark explains to the audience the Colonial theater tradition of audiences shouting "Encore!" to see actors repeat bits they found particularly entertaining.

The 21st-century audience, small though it is, takes this idea and runs with it, laughing uproariously and encoring parts Clark and the students never thought they would.

They make Layton repeat her limping, grunting entrance as Stingo three times. And they love it any time a character calls another character "booby."

The students are gracious about it, curtseying, acknowledging the audience and hamming it up a little. Sometimes they're a bit thrown off, but they know their lines backward and forward.

And Monica is assured, graceful and totally at home under the glittering stage lights.

To reach ADELE UPHAUS: 540/374-5419 auphaus@freelancestar.com