As S!NG 2023 came to a close with the Semores announced as the winners on Saturday, November 19th, the fruits of countless hours spent by the hundreds of students who have honed their performances over the past few months were finally showcased. Bringing it all together were the overall directors for each team, who spoke to The Classic about their experiences working on their respective shows.

Over the summer, the Semores overalls met nearly every day for two to three hours to prepare the script and other materials for the fall. Once rehearsal season began, their time after school was fully occupied by the production. Semores overall director (and Classic Editor-in-Chief) Elliot Heath said, “Kristen [Song] and I [faced] a number of challenges as directors. I think the biggest one for us as overalls [was] 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.”

The other 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.”

On the opposing team, the Freshiors have three overall directors and reported facing similar challenges to the Semores. 

Rachel Chan, one of the overall directors for the Freshiors, said, “I believe that S!NG 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.” 

Highlighting a sometimes forgotten yet key group in the production, Rachel said, “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.” 

The other Freshiors director, Mikolas Taveras, 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 [this community], I jumped at it.” 

In their speech proceeding the Saturday night show, Elliot and Kristen announced that their succeeding overall directors, who will lead the Freshiors team as juniors next year, will be sophomores Katie Chan and Joshua Chung. Rachel, Franxallier, and Mikolas will continue on and become next year’s Semore directors.