The Sage Informer

The MHS thespians put on their fall production: The Great All-American Musical Disaster. However, this production was anything but. Directed by Senior Ryan Olsen, this play had a cast of mostly underclassmen, including the leading role played by Jackson Heck. 

This was Ryan Olsen’s first time directing the play. He described the experience, saying, “The main difference between directing and acting is that there is so much more responsibility as a director. As an actor, you really only need to worry about the stuff you need to do or help with, but as a director you have to be on top of everyone’s responsibilities. It’s a constant back and forth of checking notes to see who forgot to move a chair off the set, or who missed an entrance. It’s also a lot more pressure to carry since a lot of the cast will come to you to answer their questions about costumes, props, and how to act a scene. That doesn’t really happen when you’re just acting.”

Olsen actually saw the predominantly underclassman cast as a unique opportunity. He said,  “To be honest, I don’t believe that the cast being made up of mostly new people changed the method of directing very much. I wasn’t involved in the casting choices, but when rehearsals started the new actors adapted very well very quickly. There was a lot of backtracking to some of the basic stuff like not walking behind the gray curtain or not standing offstage somewhere the audience can see you, but we have to talk about that stuff anyways. There was one night that I was sitting in the auditorium writing notes down for the whole show, since Mrs. Graham was setting up the light cues, and when I was giving the notes out they were all paying attention and by the next night they had fixed the issue perfectly.“ 

Lead actor and sophomore, Jackson Heck, also didn’t seem to have a problem with taking on such a large role early into his time in thespians, saying, “I would say that a lot of the difficulties of having such a large role as an underclassman came from the responsibilities I had and that if I messed up in such a big part then the stakes were higher.”

All in all, the production seems like it was all around successful. Olsen said, “I am so grateful that my first student directing experience was with such an amazing group and I really hope I get to work with a lot of them again for the Spring One-Acts.”

Jupiter Burris, Staff Writer
burzo23@sages.us