By Kiera Olson
Lights. Camera. Action. Or not. One-act season is officially underway, but acceptable rehearsal space is not. As our team gears up for the first couple competitions, the need for a school auditorium becomes prevalent. Practicing on our stage is difficult with ongoing basketball practice. This makes it harder to prepare for competitions. Additionally, having an auditorium will likely motivate students to join one-act.
Practicing on the Fillmore Central stage is extremely difficult with basketball practice occurring in the gym at the same time. To avoid the basketballs from flying onto the stage, we are required to shut the curtains. Not only does this action shorten the length of our stage and practice area, but it eliminates the possibility of practicing with the light and sound booth. This makes it hard to work on entrances and exits based on sound cues. Likewise, it’s equally as difficult to learn blocking based on location of different lighting. Furthermore, it is hard to rehearse over the constant sound of basketballs pounding against the floor. Not only does the noise make it tough to concentrate, but also hard to hear our director’s helpful comments.
Also, the lack of an auditorium makes it difficult to prepare for competitions. Having a small stage, we are forced to learn our actions and movements on a smaller scale. It becomes difficult to automatically adjust to a larger area at competitions. Unfortunately, failure to fill up the whole stage can lower the score you receive the from the judges. Also, entrance and exit times have to begin sooner than practiced, to allow for proper time to make it to our next spot in time. In order to do so, the actor or actress will have to base it entirely on his or her own judgement at the time, which can easily be a split second off. While fractions of seconds are small, they can entirely disrupt the whole flow and mood of the play. This will only hurt our team in the long run.
Having an auditorium will likely motivate students to join one-act. Although numbers are growing in recent years, interest in one-act is less than that of other varsity sports. This could be in part due to our lack of proper “rehearsal” space and need to occasionally hold practices late at night to avoid basketball practices. The creation of an additional facility would allow all practices to be held after school, possibly increasing the availability of students to join the sport.
One-act has been a successful sport in our school for years. However, this has been despite the lack of proper rehearsal space. Having an auditorium would allow our team to practice without bouncing basketballs and shrill whistles. Additionally, it would better prepare us for performing in auditoriums for competitions, and possibly motivate students to join the sport. Hopefully our team will soon be able to cut the ribbon on a new auditorium rather than hearing our director yell, “Cut!” over the noisy basketballs.
Kiera Olson is a student at Fillmore Central High School. She is one of eight area students participating in the Journal Writing Project, now in its eighteenth year.