As the season of fall comes to an end, the Green Room Theater Company performed their 2022 fall play. The play that the director, Clare McConville, chose this year was “Rumors” written by Neil Simon.

The students worked on this play over the span of two and a half months. The cast and crew spent this time creating the set, props and perfecting their lines. “Rumors” has required a lot of hands-on work, due to the setting of the play taking place inside a rich home in the residential area of New York in 1988. Since the creation of the play’s setting is very complex, everyone had to jump in and help out in any way possible.

The 2022 fall play proved to be one of the most technical plays the company has ever performed. The play “Rumors” was a cast and crew favorite for the projection of characters and lines. “Rumors” gave the cast and crew the opportunity to use technical work that usually was not required. The preparation for the play was mostly separated in order to effectively prepare. As the cast and crew went off to do their own separate work, the director, Clare McConville, marked everything that needed to be done for the play off her to-do list.

“There’s a lot that we have to do to have a successful show. It starts off by getting the rights from the company. We have to be able to have permission in order to do the show. We have to order the scripts, then we have to consider our space and what our sets are going to do. So a lot of design work and what is it going to look like physically. What do we have to do in order to build it? We rented furniture on the show so we had to find furniture to rent and then find additional pieces, so I was able to purchase several other pieces on stage. Obviously the audition process has all of our tech calls where we build everything. Behind the scenes, we rented costumes, we created a program and we have a poster that was student created. So there’s a lot that’s going on for shows,” McConville said.

As far as how to start, the actors start from script reading.

“We start off just by reading a ton of scripts and figuring out exactly what we want to do. We think about our company in terms of the types of actors that we have, obviously our space here at North, and then we kind of whittled it all down to what we feel would be best. We do try to have a variety of shows for the actors as they proceed through their four years. And then we just dig deep into what the set is going to look like,” McConville said.

As the show was coming to life, the cast prepared in their own ways by watching the play on YouTube to get an idea, practicing their lines, or running through stage cues. With the pressure of the play on their backs, the actors felt stressed and overwhelmed at times with the time commitment and balance, especially within their tech week.

“In tech week, which is the last week before the show, you have to stay at school until 10 p.m. So it’s really long rehearsals at that point. I find the whole memorization side of it, at least in terms of stage direction, pretty easy, but yeah, it does take time,” said actor Graham Gatewood.

“It’s extremely stressful because you have to deal with homework deadlines, keeping up with grades and tests but also like constantly memorizing, constantly remembering your staging and your cue lines; it’s a lot to handle,” said actor Gustavo Calhoun.

Even as actors felt stressed and overwhelmed, the cast and crew stood as a reliable support system for the actors at work. The support system for the actors stood strong and everlasting.
“For the most part, I was pretty supported. Generally, people in the theater are really accepting so you don’t have to worry about that too much,” said actor Seamus Green.

“I definitely think I did have people that had my back. I would definitely talk to them about whether I was struggling with any of my lines, and they would definitely help me with preparation or anything and definitely my director, Clare McConville, she definitely helped me throughout the play,” said actor Brody Moormeier.

The crew members in the play also felt this reliable support system as well. With new members and a short amount of time to prepare, the crew stayed positive and locked into their hard-working mindset. Throughout the show, many crew members took it in their power to work on the production outside of the theater setting.

“We all kind of helped each other out. I got help from other crew members like everyone around because I had to ask questions. It took about two and a half months for this production. I know some people come in during their Knights Block. Crew members also go to Goodwill for costumes and all that stuff and to get some extra stuff,” said assistant stage manager Caroline Keane.

“Every crew does some preparation outside of the theater. For me and my crew, it looks like doing work on the poster at home, among other things. The rehearsal process started in late September, so it goes on for quite a while. Crew meets most Fridays and Saturdays. Tech got canceled a couple times during this show, so sometimes we had to finish stuff at home,” said head of publicity crew Kathleen McNicholas.

This play stayed a cast and crew favorite and proved to be an enjoyable experience for the people involved. Many believe it was produced to its full potential and brought to life beautifully.
“I loved ‘Rumors.’ I love the concept. I love how it was a comedy. I just love comedies in general. It’s very, I don’t know, I just loved that. We did ‘Rumors’ this year, and I hope next year’s performance is even better,” Moormeier said.

“I think ‘Rumors’ was a great choice by McConville. It’s a very funny, very decently sized cast, very broad cast. And I don’t think I could ask for a better play. I think it was great,” Calhoun said.
“I definitely enjoyed ‘Rumors.’ It was definitely casted very well. And I couldn’t really see this cast doing any other show. It was a lot of fun. And, yeah, I’m glad that we got to do ‘Rumors’ this year,” Green said.