From famous alumni like Andy Samberg and Daveed Diggs, to shows that begin production right as the school year begins, it’s clear that Berkeley High School nurtures budding performance artists. There is rarely a moment of stagnancy for eager lovers of the arts. A year at BHS is packed with dance, theater, music, and student-run productions. These shows are made possible not only by the talented performers we see on stage, but also by the efforts of countless students whose work goes unseen.
A BHS musical, for instance, involves numerous roles to fill, including lights, sound, costumes, props, and stage management. The sets alone take up to six months of careful work. Stagecraft students spend many late nights in the shop, and later more long hours of running rehearsals.
Similarly, Dance Production hits the ground running as soon as the first semester begins, with a theme for their big show already picked out the year prior.
Then it’s straight into choreographing, daily rehearsals, and conditioning, alongside all of the visual planning. There is an incredible amount of collaboration and artistry that gets put into every step, and there are several factors that should be kept track of.
Even before the show is seen at its final, polished state, there are pre-showings in order to get feedback.
“It’s a great time for choreographers to present what they’ve made so far and see if their concept is coming across clearly, see if the rest of the class, the audience, has ideas for them,” said Linda Carr, the Visual and Performing Arts Dance teacher. “It’s a great way to get a little feedback from your audience, because as a choreographer, you may think you’re communicating something through your dance, but it’s nice to check in and say, are you getting that this is what I was trying to convey? Or maybe even just asking simple questions, like, are you able to see everything on the stage?”
It’s multiple processes like these that polish productions into feeling professional. The backstage process can be a way to gain perspective, so it’s not just an individual creating what we see onstage, but rather a collection of artistic minds and a community effort.
For BHS productions, just getting the behind the scenes work done isn’t enough. Excellent quality backstage is a top priority in order to create a beautiful show for eager audiences. This high bar to meet draws in community minded students with a lot of passion for the arts. The hard work and huge time commitment pays off and creates tight communities formed behind and onstage.
Neptune Afifi, a BHS junior in Stagecraft said, “It’s just really fun to see performances from a different point of view. It’s also just really cool! We get to work with a bunch of cool tech and work together to put on a performance.” Afifi described the intense months-long process that went into building the set for last year’s musical production, “Urinetown,” and backstage during the shows is no easier. Oftentimes, there will only be two students working backstage, one in each wing, along with a stage manager, a student on lights, and a student on sound. They described the pride in seeing the stage crew’s finished products, and the breaks in between spent with other stagecraft classmates that formed some of their fondest memories. “Everyone’s really nice and we form a special bond with each other. If we’re working on a show for long hours together, you bond over time,” Afifi said.
BHS productions are uniquely hands-on, with most factors fully controlled by the students, even when it comes to high-tech light and sound systems. The process gives students real experience, making the final shows feel like that much more of an accomplishment. Between the daunting amount of work that goes into these shows and the time required, it’s no wonder that the students involved form meaningful connections with each other.
“Our Monologues” is particularly close to the heart for some students. The production consists of writing, rehearsing, performing, and all of the technical work necessary for stage shows, only the stories are oftentimes very raw and personal to the students writing and enacting them.
Jessica Hipona, BHS senior and Commissioner of the Arts gives insight into backstage and pre-production work, having been both in leadership roles and being onstage herself.
“I could speak so in depth about how much that production means to me and how many people I think it’s impacted, even beyond the people who are actually in it. But on a very, very basic level, I think it’s a really good example of how the arts at Berkeley High (School) can provide a really solid community, and in some cases, like it was for me, even a home and a safe place,” Hipona said. “There’s such a big part of me that will be left with that production.” The amount of passion that goes into shows at BHS is remarkable. The months of work from so many talented, hardworking students with different skills and backgrounds, the willingness to put their feelings and ideas out there, all culminates into the numerous high level that we as the audience get to watch.