The curtain rose this past weekend on a new act for Waco High School’s theater department.
Waco High’s performing arts center was torn down 2 ½ years ago to make way for the new high school, leaving students to learn their craft in a converted computer lab on campus.
Last Thursday, they made their season debut in “Peter and the Starcatcher,” in a brand-new theater, part of rebuilt campus that cost more than $157 million.
For some students, it was their first show in a real theater. For senior Eleanor Rhodes, who played Peter Pan, it marked her last Waco High musical.
“I don’t think it’s really hit me yet,” Rhodes said. “I expected to feel, you know, very sad. I’m still going to be doing theater for the remainder of this school year, but this is the last musical that I’m going to do, and the musicals have really been my favorite part about Waco High theater. They’re so much fun. Musicals are really what I love about theater. It’s just joyous and impactful. It is just like a blast to do, every single time I do one.”
Student actors spent weeks rehearsing for the show, a comedic “Peter Pan” prequel. Cast and crew – which overlap at Waco High – prepared costumes, lighting and sets for the debut of the new theater.
“It’s been a really tiring experience,” said assistant stage manager Joshua Nelson, a senior.
“Long rehearsals, basically every day, but it pays off once, like the full picture comes together,” said Rashi Sharp, who plays Captain Scott in the play.
“You really start to love it down,” Nelson said.
Both Sharp and Nelson have more space to work on props. In the past, they had to share the space with the stage and costumes.
“I started my freshman year in a lab theater,” Sharp said. “So it’s actually amazing to have this kind of place.”
Stage manager Eisley Lawson, a senior, said it was exciting to have more space for costumes.
“Before we had this space, we kept all of our costumes in this little storage container that was really hot, so we would have to go downstairs and work in there, and then it was a whole ordeal, just like the logistics of everything,” Lawson said. “And so this is super nice to have a bigger space, to be able to work in and survive the heat.”
Students built the props and had an active role in all parts of the show. Co-director Liz Vermeulen-Wise wants students and the public to see what they can do.
“I walk into my stagecraft class and say, ‘What are we doing today?’ and they tell me what we’re supposed to do,” Vermeulen-Wise said. “And so just being able to see what these students are capable of and seeing the things that we put on stage – and there’s always challenges that’s in any theater – but wanting people to see that it’s more than just what people think of when they think of high school theater.”
Rhodes not only played the lead role but served as lighting director.
“It can be challenging, juggling both being on stage and being up in the booth, but I really love doing both, and I couldn’t really choose one over the other,” she said.
As a sophomore and junior, she taught herself the lighting system because there were no other students experienced in lighting. Now in her senior year, she had to watch YouTube videos to learn the new system, and plot the lights for the first time.
She hopes to study theatre with a concentration in technical theater and possibly a secondary concentration in acting at the University of Texas at Austin.
Rhodes starred in her first show in Waco as Peter Pan in a Tennyson Middle School production, so her role this past weekend brought her full circle.
She said theatre has been a “safe space” where she has met her closest friends.
“My best friend that I have right now I made in theater,” Rhodes said. “It’s really such a special place. We go to rehearsals every single day after school, every Saturday we have rehearsals, so we’re really around each other a lot. The people that you don’t like at first you end up loving because you just share all these wonderful experiences with them.”
