04/17/2020
I just posted this message to our cast and crew:
The announcement today is very hard, and one that I honestly hoped would not come.
"The show must go on."
These are the words that every person involved in a show learn very early in their experience in theatre.
For me, these words have been part of my DNA for the past 40 years. As long as I have been in theatre, at whatever level or medium, the show has always gone on. Whatever the roadblock or adversity we faced, the show always went on.
These are probably the most extraordinary times I have seen. Not that it makes today's announcement any easier.
Our talent and dedication to our audiences and each other are absolutely amazing. Our entire production team, your teachers, and the school administrators and staff were very excited to see you bring this year's show to life.
Sadly, we will not be able to open our 2020 production of Annie Jr.
That the announcement comes on what was supposed to be our Opening Night makes this all the more difficult to fathom.
I understand that this will be difficult for so many of you. You have worked so very hard over these past months to stage a production that would have been among the best we have seen at our school. I wish our audiences had the opportunity to see all of you, and the stellar work you have done.
I am very, very proud of each of you. If I may speak for our entire production team, we all are.
I hope that, when our lives and routines settle into whatever becomes normal as we emerge from our social distancing and sheltering in place, as we pick up and move on from here, that you will someday look on this experience and not think of it as lost time, or something that was taken from you. This sacrifice that you make benefits your classmates and teachers, the school staff, and all of their families, as well as the greater community. You are giving of yourself to keep others safe and well. When you think on this time, please remember the good you are doing.
I am especially proud of our 8th grade students. This was to be their last show on our stage, and their sacrifice is felt hardest of all.
Though you miss the opportunity of sharing this show with our audiences, you have grown so much from the experience of building these characters and this ensemble. You have grown in confidence of being who you are, in empathy by reaching out to understand the experience of others, in finding commonality by finding your story in the lives of the characters in our show, in confidence in telling your stories, and in the experience of working together to make something greater than we could build individually. It has been a gift to watch you all as you grew through our rehearsal process. You are stronger, more confident, more capable, and more empathetic people than when we started this journey, and no one, no circumstances, can take that from you.
One story I often tell, and those of you who have done many shows with me have probably heard many times, is from my college days, at strike for a show. As took the set apart, we salvaged the pieces that could be used for future productions, and threw out the rest. One piece that could not be reused was a beautifully crafted bell, made entirely of wood. It wasn't functional, as so many set pieces aren't, but it was gorgeous. As we walked it to the dumpster, our scenic design professor came with us, and we asked if he was sad that this amazing piece, that he'd worked so hard on, was just getting thrown away. His response has stayed with me ever since:
"There's always another show."
As long as you want to continue doing shows, I promise you, there will always be another show. It won't be this one - it won't be anything like it. It will be its own thing, unique to itself. Shows are like so many things that happen in our lives - they exist for a short time, changing us, sometimes in ways we couldn't foresee; and then, they're gone, but they always live on in our memories, and in the people we've become for having shared that experience with each other.
So yes, there will be another show.
And though this one ends not as we wanted, I am very glad to have shared the experience of it with you all. I am grateful for the time I spent with you in rehearsal, in watching you grow through the process. I am thankful for the performances that might have been, even if they only play in my imagination. Trust me, you guys were magnificent!
I cannot thank each of you enough. I love you more than I can ever say. And I am so very proud of you.
I am so looking forward to your next show! And I hope I will get to work with you again soon!
Stephen Pickering
Director
