Once again, the young pirates of Humboldt brought the city another barrel of laughs at the March 24 St. Augustine production of Blackboot’s Lost Loot.
The school’s Grade 7 and 8 classes put on the play with some help from the younger grades as part of their annual theatre show. As with any extracurricular activity, they were expected to complete all of their regular work and activities while also memorizing lines and rehearsing.
“I think it went really well. The kids worked extremely hard and we had to push them to get them out of their comfort zone with the pirate voices,” said Sophie McCullum, a full-time teacher at the school and the main director. “I thought it was a funny play. I wasn’t sure if they kids would be able to get into the costumes without much hesitation, but they were really good sports about it.”
McCullum is referring to the small twist whereby some of the girls had to wear male pirate clothing while some of the boys had to wear dresses. It was all part and parcel of the play in which a male and female crew are competing to find lost treasure.
The staff and cast began preparations in January. Everything was voluntary, but even still, pushing the kids to be different than they normally are was challenging at first. It was more than just jumping up on stage and reciting lines loudly. Being that the play was about pirates rather than their usual westerns or fairy tales, the kids had to put on a bit of an accent as well.
“(They had to start by) learning how to speak with intonation, enunciation, slowing down their speech and learning where to emphasize,” said McCullum. “After that, then they can get into bringing the personality into the character.”
Both McCullum and her fellow director, Ashley Hoppe, had a lot of organizing of their own to do. Aside from helping the children learn their lines, they also had to get the stage sets organized and do constant rehearsals so the kids knew where to stand and when. Towards the end, the cast was practicing twice a day - once at lunch and again after school.
“It’s just really busy and then you try and designate jobs for everyone and then juggling it with your normal everyday things you do, but that goes with any extracurricular thing you do,” said Hoppe. “We just wanted an enjoyable evening, so we kept it lighthearted and humourous. It was a chance for parents to get out and watch their kids come out of their boxes … It went as well as can be expected. There’s always a bit of hiccups, but you go through it and learn from it.”
Out of the spotlight, McCullum also made sure to mention the massive amount of work done by the stage crew for set design. A separate committee did the full backdrop (which required creativity since it had to be flexible for the various scenes) and one student put together all the sound effects by herself.
In the end, both McCullum and Hoppe said the kids did well to come out of their shells.
“There are always some years where (the students) click better than others,” said McCullum. “The biggest challenge for this play was that they had to get out of their comfort zone and I think they did that really well.”
