Student Blog: Approaching Opening Night Excitement

In two weeks, it will be the day before opening night of my school’s production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and I could not be more excited for it!!

I have to say that our cast is absolutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!!!! Each of them are so perfectly their characters, it’s actually insane. Our Barfee sounds and acts exactly how Barfee does in the soundtrack and our Olive moves me to tears everytime she sings The I Love You Song. They’re so so so talented. Out of all the shows I’ve done, I’ve never felt this connected and awestruck from a cast before.

Though I do not have to be present at rehearsals, lately, I’ve been going to them just for fun, and it’s so wonderful to see how much the cast has grown so much closer since the auditions and callbacks process. I’m seeing the beginning of friendships between castmates - friendships that’ll last for years to come. It’s all just very heartwarming to witness, and it does make me melancholy that this is my senior year, so I won’t get to experience what it’s like finding a family in a group of friends next year, but I’m glad this show could do that for them.

I also really enjoy witnessing the progress of the production staff! At the beginning of the semester, I heard snippets of conversations from our choreographer about choreo for certain scenes and now, the actors are absolutely killing their dance routines. Back in the beginning of September, the costumes were still being drafted and now, all the actors got to wear their costumes at photoshoot, which was just this past Saturday! Watching their progress is like watching a caterpillar grow into a butterfly, except progress makes it all the more real that in less than twenty days, the show will be over. I’m really proud of the production staff for exercising so much hard work in such little time. Compared to the shows debuting in November, we’ll only have a total of 8 weeks since the start of school, while the November shows will have had a total of around 11 weeks to prepare. 

That being said, I don’t think I’ve processed how close we are to tech week just yet. I know it’s coming, but I can’t fully wrap my head around it. I definitely don’t want it to be over just yet. My experience as a production manager has made me realize I really love connecting with new people and creating new bonds. This is something I can’t get when I’m on lighting teams for productions, since I’m only really ever interacting with my team. When your production manager, you get to know every single person on the production staff and you get to create something bigger than ourselves with them. Next year, I’m definitely signing up to be PM again - whatever show it may be - I want to do this again before I graduate. 

This show has already allowed me to grow into a more multifaceted person. Though I’ve always wanted to be a production manager, I never thought I could do it well enough. The responsibility seemed daunting. When I first signed on as PM, I doubted myself constantly, but I’ve been told by so many people in the staff that I’m doing such a fantastic job, and it genuinely makes me smile. I have Spelling Bee to thank for that.