Starting Friday, March 13, drama students performed “Rent,” one of Broadway’s longest-running shows, producing six performances over the course of two weeks. The musical follows a group of young musicians and artists fighting to make an impact in New York while navigating relationship struggles, finances, and HIV/AIDS.
Sophomore Ella Knight played Mrs. Jefferson, Joanne’s mom, and focused on portraying the turbulent relationship between Joanne and her mother.
“For a lot of people, it might just go over their head how emotionally and mentally taxing it could be to embody characters that were alive during a time of crisis in New York, because it’s about the AIDS epidemic,” Knight said. “… It’s kind of just those more emotional moments that have to come through while still not overdoing it, because you need to figure out just the right amount of that to showcase without it being too much. We’re trying to do it justice.”
Senior Christian Texidor played Angel, a character whose gender identity is flexible and open to interpretation, as each character refers to Angel by a different gender.
“I decided Angel is a biological male, but they really like to embrace their feminine side through drag,” Texidor said. “But because they had AIDS, they didn’t really have time to fully embrace that feminine side of them, and they died before they could progress any further.”
Texidor said the hardest part was capturing Angel’s personality, especially because this was his first lead role. To prepare, he participated in a workshop with performing artist John Elliot Kirk, took voguing classes, and worked with a drag queen to learn to walk in heels.
“It was just getting confident enough to be Angel, because Angel is an extrovert, and I’m definitely more introverted,” Texidor said. “And this was my first lead role, so I had to really, I had to really develop as a person a lot in just be more confident in who I was, so that I could do justice to them.”
Texidor said Angel’s legacy was helping others, even with his limited time.
“Angel, when they got AIDS, they realized they wanted to help as many people as they could with the time they had left. That’s what ‘Today For You’ is about,” Texidodor said. “‘Today For You’ is giving money to everyone else, and tomorrow being for them, they’re always trying to be like a motherly figure and support people before they’re gone, make a lasting impact.”
Senior Aisling Muldowney, one of the production’s stage managers, said her main goal was building the stage crew. She worked alongside master carpenter Sam Scott.
“When Mr. Scott came, and we started doing new set design, I was so grateful to have that opportunity, and I just wanted to make sure that other people could have that opportunity moving forward, and that everyone could try this out, and could learn all these amazing skills too,” Muldowney said.
For drama teacher and theater director Michelle Shannon, the production process was “exciting, stressful, exhausting, inspiring.”
“My biggest success is really creating a safe space for these actors to feel comfortable telling this story, and in the process, they built themselves a community and family, which they will forever have support from,” Shannon said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I don’t think they will likely forget.”
Shannon said she chose “Rent” as this year’s spring production to make a statement and challenge her students.
“What this piece states is that love for humankind, for mankind, for everything in the world, our environment, every person, no matter their sexual orientation, their race, their religion, their beliefs, any of that is important. “And that’s kind of the heart of this show: community and how strong we are together,” Shannon said. “… Look at what a couple of high school kids can do. You know, they created this masterpiece because they all came together to do it.”
