Hearing that she would have an opportunity to be a part of the creation of the 2017 musical at SHS, senior Racheal Trammell decided to take Tech Theatre. But this year the “tech” part of “tech theatre” was taken away. SHS is currently unable to provide a teacher who is certified to supervise students and teach them to operate saws during set building.

According to Tramell, she was mad at first because she didn’t have anything to do in the class, but she still had her friends around from theater so she started to enjoy herself after she came to terms with the fact that teachers would build the musical set this year.

“I hope it turns out really good, but I’m just nervous about the set because they built it all over fall break,” Trammell said. “I know they did a good job, but theater is a student-ran thing and it’s not really been student ran.”

However, if the set was not built by teachers, there would not be a production. The students couldn’t pick up the slack, so piano teacher Cody Wakefield and choir teacher Katherine Doty, who were already running all other aspects of the show, had to build the main part of the set. Coming in over break, the two did the heavy construction in the auditorium, adding to their jobs they already had to do during the school year. Wakefield says that effort was needed to make it less work for the final product, but it came at a cost.

“It was definitely an added stress,” Wakefield said. “Normally, we take the two weeks of break and don’t really do anything with the musical. That’s sort of our time to get away from things, and that really didn’t happen this year. So it’s been nonstop since we got into this thing.”

Since the teachers have completed parts that required saws, the student crew is working on finishing touches, cosmetics, design elements, painting and scenery of the set, says Wakefield. The students are still incorporated in the production, just not in the traditional, power tool construction part of the final product.

While the students had nothing to do before the completion of the set, they received no grades, according to Trammell. The only thing that they were able to do that was technical was Coffee House, by putting together the annual show on the auditorium stage with decorations and advertisements without the use of the small wooden stage that other Coffee Houses had used, but Trammell says that it didn’t go as smoothly as it could have. Despite not being able to operate saws, the students are coming together with the teachers, continuing work to put together a final product that they’ll have ready to perform opening night, Friday Nov. 17.

“You gotta do what you gotta do to have a show,” Trammell said.