Drama department kicks off with “Comedy of Errors”
PHOTO: Chad Fisk directs Morgan Hendrix-Chupa and Jackie Wallis as they rehearse Act 3, Scene 2 of “Comedy of Errors.”
By Genna Olavarri,
BlueDevilHUB Editor-in-Chief–
“Do you know me, sir? Am I Dromio? Am I your man? Am I myself?”
Voices reverberate in the empty Richard Brunelle Performance Hall as Jackie Wallis and Morgan Hendrix-Chupa block a scene from Davis High’s production of “Comedy of Errors”.
“Thou art Dromio, thou art my man, thou art thyself.”
Rehearsals for the fall play have kicked off, bringing drama back to the stage for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s exciting to just put on a show, like the first play since COVID. It’s kind of our comeback,” said Jackie Wallis, DHS senior and president of the DHS Theatre Board.
Wallis plays Dromio of Syracuse in “Comedy of Errors” and has been involved in almost every school production since she was a sophomore.
Last spring, the DHS Theatre Board put on “Heathers: The Musical”. It was staged outside, behind the P-wing of the high school.
Wallis was a part of the stage crew for the show. “That one was really messy I think. It was crazy in the midst of COVID,” Wallis said.
The show’s opening also coincided with the tragic passing of a DHS student. “That really just threw us all for a loop that really had us all reconsider and reconfigure that show,” director Chad Fisk said.
Coming into this year, Fisk went to the Theatre Board with a proposal to put on William Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors”.
“We wanted to go with a comedy-heavy year,” Fisk said.
The comedy will be the school’s first foray into Shakespeare in about 10 years, according to Fisk. “Got to get some Shakespeare in every so often,” Wallis said.
Fisk wanted to produce a show with a more light-hearted theme given the events of the past year, and the board agreed.
“It would be kind of out of touch to put on a tragedy while we’re going through a tragedy,” Wallis said.
Fisk plans to stage the play so that the audience can sit on stage.
“Just because everyone’s been doing so much remote stuff and so much stuff where we don’t have the personal connection, we wanted to do something that’s a little bit interactive with the audience,” Fisk said.
In adherence with continued COVID-19 guidelines, performers and audience members alike will have to wear masks during performances.
Fisk will incorporate the actors’ wearing masks into the context of the play. However, he has yet to decide how he will incorporate it.
“It’s a play with a lot of mistaken identities and twins… we’ll definitely find some mask bits,” Fisk said.
With Shakespeare’s complex language, actors must typically rely on physicality to convey the action of the story to the audience.
With the addition of masks, students’ actions on stage will be even more important to the audience’s interpretation of the dialogue.
“I always have like a goal for the performers… I want to expose this cast and the people working on the show to Shakespeare, to really working and finding the nuance of the language,” Fisk said. “[And] to find ways to physicalize things, especially since we’re wearing masks. We have to be able to kind of tell the story using physical things.”
Wallis hopes that the production will reach a wider audience at DHS and promote interest in the school’s drama program. “Recruitment is low because of COVID so it would be nice for everyone to be inspired and join next year,” Wallis said.
“Comedy of Errors” opens on Oct. 29 and will run for six performances.
