Every class has a teacher who impacts a group of students, and drama this year was no different. During the school day, Mrs. Harris stands before a sixth-grade audience, but this year, she took on a different role: the director of Day Creek’s Peter Pan Jr. Drama isn’t new for her, as she discovered her passion for the arts in high school.
“I’ve been doing drama since my senior year of high school, and it’s just been something I’ve always really loved to do,” said Mrs. Harris. “[I] made great friendships and things like that. I actually started in theater as a costume designer and I slowly gained other skills.”
Mrs. Harris spent almost every afternoon preparing the cast for opening day. She picked out the costumes, hand-made some of the props, and yelled Be quiet! too many times to count.
“I was usually here about an hour after students left, after every rehearsal. I came in several weekends, and spent whole days here, just getting stuff ready for everybody,” Mrs. Harris said.
During rehearsals, Mrs. Harris encountered many challenges, some with a quick fix while other issues required plenty of patience. Mics went in and out, props disappeared, and of course, the junior high actors acted like junior highers.
“I made the poison cake, the giant clock, Hook’s bomb. I’ve [had to] make several of the props used in the show. We had several broken props, and we often had actors or actresses not able to show up at the last minute, so we had to rearrange things. Shared spaces, we’ve kind of had to rearrange our space last minute to accommodate everybody’s things,” Mrs. Harris said.
While their were many challenges to producing her first DCIS student musical, Mrs. Harris enjoyed the process.
“It was definitely a challenge, but the show must go on, and it was nice to be a problem-solver,” said Mrs. Harris. “That’s what I try to teach my students to do: face a problem and fix it. And I got to demonstrate that during this whole process and figure [everything] out.”
Mrs. Harris had help along the way, especially from her 8th grade stage manager, Ashlyn McCorkle. She knew the play better than anyone – maybe even better than Mrs. Harris.
“I know the play Peter Pan forwards and backwards because my sister was in it before, so I’ve watched it a million times,” said Ashlyn.
To make such an amazing play happen, the cast and crew had to make some sacrifices. One was to ahem, tragically and unfortunately, miss a week of school. Peter Pan was scheduled during the day as usual, but the cast also returned to perform again in the evenings for a total of seven shows. And then they were back on for two additional shows on Saturday.
“I liked [having a break] because I have things I do outside of school,” Ashlyn said. “When I had rehearsals until 2:30 or 5, it conflicted with my activities outside of school. I like during the day instead of after school, because it gives me more time to do my homework and missing work from the week.”
Mrs. Harris was proud of all the cast and crew’s hard. She’s sad to say goodbye to the eighth graders, but she can’t wait to see the sixth and seventh graders return next year.
“I thought they were ready the week before; [when] we started tech week, I had no concerns,” Mrs. Harris said with tears in her eyes. “I cried pretty much every show; I’m so proud of everybody. The play turned out pretty amazing, and watching everyone all onstage made me so happy. I love you all, and thank you.”
