As S!NG 2022 approaches, with the first of the four shows on Friday, students are diligently working on perfecting their performances this week. Bringing it all together are the overall directors for each team, who spoke to The Classic about their respective shows.

The Semores directors met every day over the summer for two to three hours to prepare the script for the fall. Once rehearsal season began, their time after-school was once again occupied by the production.  Semores overall director (and Classic Editor in Chief) Elliot Heath said, “Kristen [Song] and I face a number of challenges as directors. I think the biggest one for us as overalls is pouring the necessary time into the production.”

“There are a number of tasks that one wouldn’t even think of when imagining our directorial duties, such as ordering costumes or planning fundraisers,” Elliot said. “Fortunately, many of our other directors graciously take over duties for some of those,” he added. 

The second Semores overall director Kristen Song said, “We worked with around the same cast of actors for these two years and they truly amaze me with how much they’ve grown. As passionate as they were since the beginning of our journey, they’ve only improved with each rehearsal and grown comfortable on the stage.”

The Freshiors have three overall directors and faced similar challenges to the Semores. 

Rachel Chan, one of the overall directors for the Freshiors, said, “I believe that SING developed a way for me to broaden my perspectives on developing a story. The contrasting opinions from the people around us showed me that there was more than one way to portray a particular line, mood, or action to elevate it [such as] lighting and music. In particular, I truly appreciate how THHS Tech Crew helped us through our scenes as they provided suggestions for what we wanted to describe. The lights available in the school aren’t the most high-tech, but their help showed us what was possible to isolate our characters for certain scenes.” 

“I believe that being a part of S!NG positively influenced my experience at THHS,” said Freshiors overall director Franxallier Causapin. “As a transferee, I didn’t know anyone during my sophomore year, but being a part of S!NG made it so much easier for me to make friends and adjust to THHS. Many people in S!NG are extremely friendly and welcoming; they were always willing to assist me when I was having difficulties or feeling overwhelmed by everything.” 

As S!NG comes to an end, future directors will soon be in a similar situation to which Mikolas Taveras, a current overall director for the Freshiors, now finds himself in. As per tradition,  outgoing directors have to select their picks for who should take on the directing role the following year. Mikolas said, “As for how I became an Overall Director, that mystery is left with our predecessors, since they appointed us [to] the job. I took the role because, in all honesty, I love S!NG and the community it creates, and when given the opportunity to create something magical with them, I jumped at it.”

Photo by Katherine Lian