Right before spring break, the Play Production: Theater class put on “Much Ado About Nothing,” a Shakespeare show. The show was more than just an average production; it was Upper School Theater Teacher Abby Nathan’s thesis.
Nathan chose the specific play because they wanted to do Shakespeare, and “Much Ado About Nothing” was their first show out of college, so it held significance to them.
“I chose it because I know I love it,” Nathan said. “I know it’s a good show, so I wanted to choose what I think is one of the strongest comedies.”
Yet the problems started when only three students signed up for the class. Nathan had to recruit students who were not in the class to fulfill the minimum number of roles needed to do the production. Ninth-grader Stella Meerman was one of the initial three actors, and she played Beatrice, Dogberry, and Don John.
“Everybody was playing like three roles, it was a lot of lines to memorize,” Meerman said. “The challenge was to make the characters different enough from each other that [the audience] could tell that you were playing someone different.”
There were problems from a direction standpoint as well.
“I never really got to watch as much as I would have liked, I was always reading someone else’s part.” Nathan said.
Even facing all the challenges that came with putting on a 15-person play with five people, Nathan could not just change the show. The paperwork for the thesis was filed during the summer and could not be changed.
“If it wasn’t my thesis, I would just choose a three-person play we’d be golden but I also kind of wanted the challenge. The creative challenge ended up working and thus created a better paper. If you think about it, a thesis is just compiling how the show went. So everything about that will go in the paper and a little drama is good for readers.”
Meerman admires the work that Nathan did as her director.
“It was really fun to work with Mx. Abby, I really enjoy their directing style,” Meerman said. “They had such a small cast to work with, I don’t know what I would have done.”
Nathan reflects upon how the show went and how grateful she is to her cast and crew for making sure the play could go on as well as it did.
“A lot of them gave up free periods or free time and gave me work that was professional. They didn’t have to be so nice, didn’t have to be so lovely to work with. They also got along great. That always makes the show easier and the crew worked their butts off,” Nathan said. “It’s really like heartwarming to see everyone come together. I’m so endlessly in gratitude to my cast and crew for making this as awesome as it could be.”
