Lessons in the Limelight: The Storied History and Bright Future of Theater at NCS

5/7/2018

As darkness begins to fall on the Close, Trapier Theater is coming to life.

A strumming guitar and the encouragement of a teacher bring Anna Youngkin '18 and Christian Potter STA '18 to their feet. Under the eyes of a half-dozen classmates, the pair fall into a deft box step, a wedding dance that, in a few weeks' time, will provide a moment of happily ever after in this year's Upper School Fall Play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Several yards away, a larger group works out a different scene: Cast as fairies, the students are deciding how best to physically communicate pique while projecting Shakespeare's unfamiliar argot.

Both groups are made up of veteran actors, with several productions under their belts, and opening night still feels far away. So they laugh often, comfortable with the half-finished status of things. This spirit of adventure is encouraged by the show's director, theater teacher Chris Snipe, who says later that he's after "a give-and-take where students feel that they're invested in the process right from the beginning."

Katharine Boasberg '18, who plays Helena, says there also is trust, born of a strong sense of community after so many shows together: "Being with each other constantly, you start to bond with each other."

All of this connects the players to a ritual as old as the Close itself.

Even before the Cathedral's cornerstone was laid and the doors of St. Albans opened, NCS students were organizing themselves to present plays. The inaugural Commencement service, in 1901, included a performance of Pygmalion and Galatea, a popular comedy of the time, and student interest soon prompted the school administration to add drama courses to the curriculum.

Theater is woven into the very fabric of NCS: The 4th grade's annual performance of Shakespearean scenes had its start a century ago, when the Upper School formed a Players' Club to read Shakespeare; and the Festival of Lessons and Carols is the modern version of what began as a Christmas play, presented by the Players' Club each year. "Sometimes it was an old morality or mystery play, sometimes a more modern one," former head of school Mabel B. Turner recalled in the NCS history Polished Corners, "but always at some point introducing the Nativity scene."

Coordination on the Close also got a foothold through theater: The first performance of musicals in the 1940s brought NCS and St. Albans together for coed productions. Within a decade, they were even doing original musicals. The schools' theatrical reputation spread to the point that, in 1957, playwright Thornton Wilder paid a visit to the Close to watch NCS girls present scenes from his Our Town.

A New Model for Theater

The NCS/STA program as it exists today didn't truly arrive, though, until the 1960s, when several events came to pass almost simultaneously:

A new teacher, Gwendolyn Coney, became the director of NCS drama and transformed it into what a colleague would describe as "an enviably complete program."
Ted Walch joined the St. Albans faculty and began building up that school's theater program. Along the way, he would push to stage more audacious plays and to build connections between the Close and student thespians at Catholic University—among them two rising actors, Susan and Chris Sarandon (Bull Durham and The Princess Bride, respectively).
St. Albans constructed a large, dedicated theater under the new Ellison Library. Trapier Theater, boasting a modified proscenium stage and hundreds of seats, meant that shows could move out of such makeshift venues as Whitby Gym and the St. Albans Trophy Room.
A joint NCS-STA Drama Club formed in 1969. This brought an end to the uncomfortable days when St. Albans boys and NCS girls would appear in each other's productions only after plenty of coaxing. "The exchange, when it occurred, seemed unnatural," as Walch put it.

Within just a few years, the two schools had attained the venue, the curriculum, the student preparation, and the drive to reach new heights. As a result, by the mid–1970s, an article in the Discus noted, audiences no longer came simply to support the students; they "come to expect a high-quality production. … The development in the last decade has been remarkable."

In 1972, the schools produced an original play, Doogan, that, like the earlier musicals, had been commissioned just for them. A staging of A Streetcar Named Desire a few years later featured three leads who would achieve professional careers in acting and theater: Kate Collins '77 (All My Children), Clancy Brown STA '77 (The Shawshank Redemption), and Charles Newell STA '77 (artistic director at Chicago's Court Theatre).

Rosemary Brandenburg '74, who now works as a set decorator on Hollywood films (The Hateful Eight, Amistad), recalls Trapier in those days as a magnet for artistically minded students and even a self-described misfit. "The theater was where I could fit in and feel like I knew what I was supposed to do, socially," Brandenburg says. "You built relationships through doing things together, as opposed to just hanging out. It gave me a sense of belonging."

While the students grew closer, NCS drama teacher Wren Cooper noted around this time that the schools, too, were coming to depend on each other, particularly as the theater program became more coordinated. No longer was one person in charge of theater at each school. Instead, the department was now a joint program.

This was another major change, and it would deliver needed stability to the program through inevitable personnel changes: Coney died in 1972; Pat Witt joined the faculty the next year; Walch moved on in 1979. Further faculty changes would follow, but the foundation had been laid and was firm.

Shake Hands With Shakespeare

Across the Close from Trapier, Lower School students at NCS were getting an annual taste of dramatics—Shakespeare in 4th grade, Molière in 5th grade, and Greek tragedy in 6th. English teacher Molly Hemphill recalled her reaction upon joining the Lower School: " 'You do Shakespeare with 4th graders?! You must be crazy!' Obviously, I could not have been more wrong."

Julia Coffey '93 vividly recalls playing Ophelia to Jessica Hardesty Norris '93's Hamlet in 4th grade, as well as performing a Greek tragedy with 6th-grade classmates in the Cathedral's outdoor amphitheater. "I have great memories of those first three years, and that was it: I was well and truly bit," Coffey says. "I started going to every Shakespeare play I could."

Shakespeare still calls to Coffey, who today is a professional actor: This summer, she will play Richard II at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, adding the monarch to a résumé that already includes a half-dozen of the Bard's plays.

While several NCS and STA alumni have joined Coffey in making a career in theater, films, and television, Mark Bishop, the chair of the NCS-STA theater department, describes that as a happy, unintended outcome.

"It's not our mission to have students going off and continuing in the field of theater. It's certainly wonderful when it happens," Bishop says.

Instead, he adds, the faculty are focused on "exposing students to theater production work, whether it's on the acting side or on the technical side."

The department's four teachers lead Middle and Upper School classes on acting, lighting, sound, costuming, stage design, and direction. Most of the students then put these lessons to work in productions that range from large-cast Broadway-style musicals to far more intimate one-act plays.

Over the course of four Upper School years, Bishop says, a student will have the opportunity to take part in a wide variety of productions and to gain "the educational experience of what it's like to be in those different kinds of shows."

Bishop joined the NCS-STA theater faculty in 1990, succeeding Wren Cooper in a department that also included Witt and Lori Milstein. "I feel very lucky to have come here when Pat Witt was the chair of the department," he says, "She had worked with Ted and Gwen, so I feel like I'm one step removed from the whole history of the modern era."

One of his early acting classes on the Close included Coffey as a student, and she says, "I still remember to this day the work Mark did with us on Streetcar: combining the script analysis and our smarts as NCS girls, along with this visceral artistic desire."

The teachers, Coffey adds, would also encourage a teenage actor to delve deep into her character, becoming someone else for a bit. "In hindsight, I realize how smart that was, because any teenager is somewhat self-conscious to begin with," she says. "What Mark and Pat encouraged was to really focus on the role, to really focus on the details—not just your objectives as a character but also what you were doing—and make those elements more interesting than your own nervousness, or your own ego."

Showtime

Back in Trapier Theater, it's now opening night. The stairs down from the Ellison Library are jammed with adults and children chatting on their way to the box office and their seats.

In the lobby, walls are covered with posters and photographs from past productions. Together, they offer a powerful testimony to the artistic commitment of students and faculty alike: Each show involves some 50 students, and Bishop estimates that each student puts in 40–50 hours per show to build and dress sets, sew and repair costumes, arrange and run lights, and rehearse lines and movement. The most committed Upper School students will participate in three productions a year: a play, a musical, and a one-act-play festival; the Middle School does a play and a musical each year.

As the audience members find their seats, students are putting the final touches on costumes and makeup. To honor Trapier's golden anniversary, this Midsummer Night's Dream has been dressed with a strong Carnaby Street vibe, and it's a coup for the costume crew, directed by teacher Anne Liberman: loud paisleys, tie-dye jeans, tight pants and short hemlines, way-out tights and fringed boots.

The technical crew, guided by teacher Greg Lampasona, has transformed the Trapier stage over weeks into a Athenian wood. Now props are placed in hiding but at the ready. The lights dim, and it's time to begin.

This, Katharine Boasberg says, is her favorite part, even after eight school productions: "The adrenaline rush of going onstage … it's intoxicating, almost addicting."

The players receive a warm welcome, and soon they are bringing laughs and nods from their audience. The play is 400 years old, but the Close Theater Club makes it all feel fresh and new.

Eventually, perhaps too soon, Puck bids all a good night, the lights go up, and rousing applause begins. The performance is over, and the cast and crew savor the moment with their families and friends. Tomorrow night, the production goes on anew.

Asked to describe the evolution of theater on the Close over the decades, Bishop puts it simply: "A drama department studies drama and dramatic literature. A theater department does theater.

"Today we are a theater department, working toward realized things."

— by Scott Butterworth

Additional research for this article was contributed by NCS archivist Elna Clevenger and Theater Department chair Mark Bishop.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2018 issue of NCS Magazine.

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