The story, Little Women, is about four sisters, Jo, Beth, Meg and Amy, learning how to get through life as their father fights in the war. Tallwood High School interpreted this into a play.
Little Women was originally made by Louisa May Alcott, and Tallwood’s theatre teacher, Earl C. DeMott, directed the on stage play. His students, junior Ruby Coker (Meg), sophomore Hailey Rimbey (Jo), junior Lucy Goodwin (Beth), sophomore Aaliyah Sampson (Amy), portrayed the main daughters of the play.
“I feel like I’m a lot like Jo in my own way,” Rimbey said, “so it was easy for me to personally and with the other people in the play, how they’re interacting with me. It made it easier for me to get into character and everything.”
“I’d say that it was pretty easy [getting into character],” Sampson said, “because I was able to do character analysis and also there was already a movie made on the play, so I watched it and got a feel of what my character was like and what her mood was.”
Sophia Dodge, junior student at Tallwood high school, was the Tech Director for Little Women, plus being Josephine and Clara in the play, with Jace Valenzuela helping with audio and sound. She helped control the lighting and the sound of the play.
“I have experience with everything that’s up there, which is lights and programing them,” Dodge said, “so, on our lightboard, we have all of the fixtures, which are connected to the lights on the stage, and then there are sliders and stuff, and then you select different fixtures, and then you program them to the sliders, and then throughout the entire script, you have to go ‘this slider goes up, this slider goes down,’ so on and so forth, and I basically did all of that.”
“Audio was a little tricky,” Dodge said, “because it took me a long time to convince DeMott to let us use microphones, even though the auditorium is huge. But he refused for a while, [and] so I convinced him to finally do it. So figuring out microphones was a little tricky, but in the end, it was pretty simple.”
Despite the many trials and errors, there were still some nooks and crannies in the final product. Each person had their challenges, whether if they were acting or on the tech side of things.
“I don’t think there’s any I disliked,” Goodwin said, “I’m trying to think. No, there’s none that I dislike. All the things I was on, it was either I was just a supporting character just standing there, or I was actually doing something important. None of my scenes were anything that I disliked.”
“Probably the opening scenes [were the hardest],” Sampson said, “because my character is really bratty, so I’d be into that mindset of being bratty and loud and stuff and I’m not usually like that, I’d like to think.”
However, not everything was such a hassle; the play did receive a lot of praise for a reason. The cast even had some fun with some of the scenes they did.
“I guess my favorite would be the death scene,” Goodwin said. “That’s the one that I’ve rehearsed the most.”
“I liked the scenes with Marmee,” Coker said, “and getting ready for the dance, I feel like that was my favorite.”
Studios and movies usually ask for bloopers and/or behind the scenes videos for a reason: they make the actors feel human and give them depth to their friendship for the world to see. It is no different to how the cast had to rehearse and practice, whether they were bloopers or just fun actions between everyone.
“So there’s this one thing that happened,” Rimbey said. “Mr. Lawrence, the grandfather, is supposed to be one thing, and so he has this cane, and he was limping with this cane, and he just broke out into dance with the cane, and it was so funny because he was doing kicks with the cane, and it was so hilarious.”
“Yes,” Coker said, “Jayden was tap dancing with a top hat and, oh my gosh, we were all laughing. I feel like we all connected on the way through that for some reason. It was just like where we could share laughs and be ourselves, I mean, even in character, it was just fun to experience, and it was just fun to have those silly moments happen.”
The play was immaculate, fun and challenging for many people in the ensemble. DeMott feels proud of his students for what they were able to accomplish and their roles they stepped up to.
“A lot of people stepped up that I actually never met prior to Monday,” DeMott said, “So you get a lot of people coming out saying I’d like to help out. And they really did, much, much more than I anticipated, so very pleased with that.”
