Class is in Session
Bringing the “best years of our lives” to the stage
By Ian Chant |
Director Andrea Allen |
From
High School Musical to
Glee,
She’s All That to
American Pie, popular entertainment’s depiction of high school often ranges
from silly to downright nonsensical. But in the interest of fairness, we should note
that high school was frequently pretty darn ridiculous. Thus, the production team
for
Speech & Debate has a tightrope to walk in bringing the high school
experience to the stage—how to recreate a genuine experience, ludicrous warts
and all, without slipping into well-worn clichés.
It’s a tall order, but you would be hard-pressed to find someone better equipped
for the job than Seattle Rep's own Andrea Allen. As Director of Education, Allen works
closely with high school students throughout the region. It’s an experience that has
helped her understand the teen characters in Speech & Debate...to the extent
that anyone can really understand high school students, of course.
"I’ve always been completely fascinated by the adolescent brain, because there is
a part of me that has stayed there," Allen says.
And she is particularly fascinated in how to find the genuine humor in
adolescence—don’t go looking for it, she says.
"The goal of this production is not to be funny. The goal is to accurately represent
adolescence," says Allen. "You don’t go in to make something funny, because if you do,
it will die." With that in mind, audiences can expect Allen's vision of Speech &
Debate to be a little less High School Musical and a little more
Heathers.
One thing that was particularly important to the production was that the environment
depicted in Speech & Debate reflect high school as it exists right now—not
someone’s idea of their experience four, five, or, ahem, 20 years ago. Which explains why
she and costume designer Christine Myers have been loitering around lockers a lot recently.
"We had to figure out what was happening now in high school and really tap into that,”
says Myers. “We realized that unless we spent time in a high school, this was all a moot
point."
Allen and company are also interested in the social aspect of high school and how
important a circle of friends can be. In an environment where, as Allen puts it, "everyone
is a misfit pretending not to be a misfit," the journey to finding a place to fit in, just
a small place to be comfortable, can be a daunting one. "How do we find our tribes, how do
we find our little rafts in this sea of horrible existential angst and worries about our
bodies and worries about all sorts of things?" she says.
But that’s a sentiment that isn’t left behind at graduation. There is something universal
in the experience of adolescence, some part of the often-turbulent experience of growing up
that everyone can relate to. And that is the heart of the play for Allen.
“I want the piece to be about the kernel of humanity in all of us that is so worried about
fitting in, so wanting to be special, so full of contradictions, so hopeful," says Allen. "I
hope that audiences will be able to remember, whether they were popular or not, whether the
best or the worst years of their lives were in high school—that it will bring back a
sense of that person they were in high school, and hopefully that they still are."
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In addition to visiting high schools to do research for the costumes and set, Director Andrea
Allen has been sitting in on actual speech and debate classes and competitions. Check out the
video journal at blog.seattlerep.org.
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