Bloomington High School South, The Gothic, 2009, Page 88

Description:	getting intocharacterTheatre South students discussed the variousmishaps they had to work around during the courseof their productions, whether they occurredon stage or backstage.The show must go on. This adagehas always been one of the centralideas behind live theater and it certainly served as one of the mottos for manyof Theatre Souths student actors. TheTheatre South thespians did their verybest to work around the mishaps andfreak occurrences which so often happen during the course of producing ashow.Senior Theodore Creek remembered a funny mishap from this yearsproduction of The Odd Couple. Everytime Travis [senior Travis Lampke]stood up, his chair would fall over,said Creek. And while this mishap mayhave been annoying and frustrating, itwas nowhere near the magnitude ofwhat happened during Theatre SouthsMay 8, 2009 performance of A Thoroughly Modern Millie.Senior Travis Lampke explainedthe mechanical failure which plungedthe entire auditorium into a state ofdarkness, leaving the actors and audience confused. The filters were tooold, said Lampke, and that causedthe lights to overheat and burn out. Inthe middle of the show there was all ofa sudden this blackout.Another mishap occurred while thecast and crew were preparing for oneof their rehearsals. We were trying toopen the garage door backstage, and aset piece fell down and hit C-Rad [Ms.Catharine Rademacher], said Creek.Yet, while these mishaps may haveseemed discouraging, many of the actors felt that they added an extra dimension to the performances. Despitethe fact that she had to change microphones four times during the course ofthe May 8th performance, senior Carrie VanDoren didnt feel discouraged. Its fun when mishaps happen,she said, because it breaks up the monotony of doing the same performanceover and over again.Certainly, the cast and crew felt thepressure from the mishaps. You maynot see it from the front, but peoplewill be running around like crazy backstage, said VanDoren, Theyre always running around saying stuff like,Is my [microphone] working, is my[microphone] working?Commenting on the anxiety causedby the threat of technical difficulties,Creek added, A lot of the time Imthinking, [I] just stay on for my sceneand go off right after Im finished.Yet despite the ever-looming presence of stage mishaps and mistakes,this year Theatre South managed toput on multiple performances of threedifferent shows, Estrogeneration, TheOdd Couple, and A Thoroughly ModernMillie, during the course of the year.Thats what I love about live theatre,said VanDoren, Nothings perfect, andyou just have to keep going. —NIKOLAJKNAPOWSKI
Source:	http://cdm17129.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/hs-bloomsouth/id/8110
Collection:	Bloomington High School South

Further information on this record can be found at its source.