Cast and Crew from Fall 2015 production
of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
Welcome to the Theater at The Mount,
home of the Mount Carmel High School Drama Club!
The Mount Carmel High School Drama Club is comprised of Mount Carmel Sundevil students who have a passion for the theater and are looking for exciting opportunities and experiences to sharpen their skills and abilities in theater work. We are delighted that you have stopped by and we encourage you to tour our website, buy show tickets and support theater arts here at Mount Carmel!
On March 12th, Theatre at the Mount went dark.
Johanna Kapsis, as Velma, waits in the wings during West Side Story.
Photo by Don Sheffler.
By order of the Governor, all gatherings of 250 or more were canceled across the state, which meant that evening's performance of West Side Story would not go on as planned. Emails went out to parents, signs were plastered over the doors. Angry patrons demanded their money back as students wept in the halls. We were shut down.
I still have trouble processing the flurry of activity that followed. One day, my colleagues met my eye with sympathetic looks--the next, we learned that students would not be returning to campus for at least three weeks (or more, as we now know). I felt embarrassed to grieve the early closure of the school musical in the midst of all the fear and panic.
Making theatre is how I empathize with the human spirit. In the past few years, our community of artists and technicians has dealt with flooded facilities, triple-booked events, and real life-or-death emergencies. We've leaned and supported one another through challenges and triumphs both personal and public. We have been mighty.
But for over 50 days now, the theater is dark. We have not been able to come together in the space we love so dearly. We have not welcomed our families and friends into the house--our house--and connected with one another over the most precious and necessary thing: our shared humanity. We miss it so very much. We miss each other. We miss you.
I often quote Thornton Wilder to my students: "I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being." Whether it's the first or the five-hundredth time they've heard it, they know--and so do I--that it's why we keep coming back to this space, to examine ourselves, to explore our connections, and to revel in the feeling of shared time and space and presence. A luxury, now, as we stay home, reading plays and continuing to warm up our voices and bodies, ready for the moment when we get to return.
Doc (Don Sheffler) breaking the devastating news to
Tony (Finn Proctor) that Maria is dead.
Photo by Brett Alan Photography
We haven't disappeared. We're waiting for our cue.
Ever onwards,
Stacy Michelle Walker
Director, Theatre at the Mount