Taylorsville High School Theatre Department presents their winter play, Wait Until Dark. A play by Frederick Knott premiered in 1966 on Broadway. The play involves Sam Hendrix (Liam Huff) returning home with a doll, not knowing it’s stuffed with heroin, from a trip to his wife Suzy Hendrix (Lily Neff) who is blind and alone in her apartment and depends on her four senses which “leaves the desperate Suzy to rely on her four senses to play a terrifying game of survival with the crooks. Will Suzy get out of the hell she has been enmeshed in?”
Sophomore Lily Neff was thrilled to be playing Susy Hendrix in her first lead role. She has acted in numerous plays in the ensemble or minor roles, so having to play a lead role made Neff feel she could “be out there more.” Changing the way she sees and thinks about herself has brought out a different person on stage.
She said, “I feel like it’s a personal thing [to get] in my way of thinking, ‘I’m doing everything wrong’ [to] ‘not having that mindset.”
She understands the ego of her character to bring out her personality. Since it’s set in the 50s, it helps Neff “know how to act like a 50s housewife rather than a high school teenager” to make her role authentic to the timeline.
As Susy Hendrix’s husband, Sophomore Liam Huff plays Sam Hendrix. He shared, “Even though I wasn’t on stage for very much of the time, it was still a lot of fun, especially to work with [Neff] and play off of her.”
Huff has also been cast in ensemble roles that are usually comedic side roles. For the role in this play, he noticed he got better at “acting realistically and more naturally than out-there-cartoonish-Disney-type” character.
StageMilk states that “inspiration is the drive you have to set those goals.” These actors may have similar inspirations, but each has different reasons for those inspirations. Along with actors, doctors, musicians, and engineers look forward to completing a goal knowing that they have someone or something that inspires them to endure hard work. It feels like an energy, “It’s that feeling you get from watching a great performance and thinking: ‘I want that. I want to be them.’”
Sometimes inspiration comes from self-esteem. Junior Tajan Hallett has found that for himself. He played Mike Talman, the professional con man who’s partnered with Sgt. Carlino (Ru Bushman). He learned to develop his interests by acting in his first full-length play. He said he is one of his motivators; he shared, “It’s just something I found an interest in, something that I thought was fun,” along with his peers, teachers, and parents.
After performing in Wait Until Dark, Hallett can say that it has improved his confidence and proved to himself that he “can go on stage and perform a big role.”
Each member of the production team must be on the same page. Each has to put in their best effort, their own ideas, and act realistically. “Ms. Christison was the most motivating,” Ru Bushman, a senior, played as Sgt. Carlino talked about the Director and Theatre Teacher.
They continued, “She had a vision that was very strong and made it very clear what the show was gonna look like in the end, which worked very well for us.”
Just like Hallett, this was Bushman’s first full-length play, and they have been working on their characterization. That characterization required feeding on information on how to gain the ideal character, and food, to get them to act as Sgt. Carlino and not just a regular Bushman. “Every tech rehearsal and every performance, I don’t think turkey sandwiches with mustard are going to be on my palette any time soon from here on.”
Acting is another way to express suppressed emotions. It may not be direct feelings from the actors, but it’s a way to exaggerate strong emotions such as anger, love, or fear. An article published by Intermountain Health Care explains how actors react in complex situations and feelings relating to the roles they’re in. “When an actor embodies these emotions, or when an audience member witnesses them, it creates a safe space to process similar personal feelings. This release can reduce stress and increase mental clarity.”
Wait Until Dark was a whole new experience for Sophomore Celeste Crenshaw who played Gloria. She played cheery kid roles in previous roles, so playing a loud and troubled character was a step out of her comfort zone. “It helped me to become louder because I was really loud in it,” Crenshaw said, “and I’m usually not a loud person.”
What helped her get into character was Ms. Christison. She would have everyone imagine themselves in a specific situation and what they would do. This helps Crenshaw get in the zone of acting big and loud.
Junior Jason Glad also admits that “[it] was kinda hard because I didn’t like it, I didn’t enjoy playing that [kind of] character.”
Glad played the main antagonist, Harry Roat, a character that required strong emotions, from being mysterious to sociopathic in his role. His biggest motivator is the Theatre Director, Mr. Garner, who believes that Glad is good at what he does and wants to see what more he can do, and that’s what he gave. “I like playing the character of course, but […] it was first being okay with being a villain and that it’s just part of the story, then letting myself be angry. It was almost therapeutic in a way.”
He captured the character realistically that it was hard to notice he was acting. It’s either go big or go bigger for Glad.
Kallie Peterson and Marbella Serrano are both Seniors and stage managers. They help bring the show together by helping actors write down their blocking and taking notes on what can be improved with each actor. Serrano explained, “[Peterson and I] would have these Google Docs in our Drive for the show, including information that we would fill out like the Rehearsal Report.” There’s no superior stage manager than the other; rather, they work side-by-side, giving each other ideas for the play. Whenever one misses a rehearsal, the Rehearsal Report summarizes what was done with notes for improvement.
There’s strong opposition in Wait Until Dark, love and hate, truth and lies, even good and bad. Ms. Christison has succeeded in capturing these elements in the play, as mentioned by Bushman. She writes a note on the play’s program, “We love to see what makes others human. We love to experience something we can relate to. We ask ourselves, ‘Am I a Susy, or a Roat?’” Taylorsville High School Theatre Department has yet again impressed the audience with a creative and vigorous production!
