Art Show | written by: CLAIRE WOOD, Darien High School Class of ’27, a lead in Theatre 308’s Fall production
Claire Wood (left) with Isabella Cossaro, backstage at the The Lightning Thief last spring / Photo courtesy Jeff DeMaio
THERE’S A QUOTE BY PABLO PICASSO I think about often, “I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”
I didn’t fully understand what it meant until I had spent several years in Theatre 308. In the beginning, I knew that I loved performing, being on stage, learning songs and becoming someone else for a few hours. What I didn’t realize was that theatre was also about sharing something with the people around me, and that the most important part of theatre for me was what happened behind the curtains.
I joined 308 as soon as I entered Darien High School (DHS). I had first seen a production in middle school, and was enchanted. I watched students work so hard to make all the separate pieces of the show come together, and I couldn’t wait to be a part of it. I started with the Darien Summer School’s Musical Theatre Workshop, an incredible opportunity for younger students. My mom would stay up until midnight the night before registration, waiting for it to open to make sure I got a spot. It gave me a glimpse at the community I would eventually become part of.
I expected to make friends in the club, but those friendships quickly grew into something bigger and made my high school experience especially wonderful. In theatre, you get close to people very fast. You spend hours together after school, rehearsing the same scene over and over, sitting backstage waiting for your cue, or simply talking because you have nowhere else to be. You see people when they’re nervous, exhausted, excited and also genuinely themselves. Eventually, they stop feeling like castmates and more like true friends.
That became especially clear to me during the production of The Lightning Thief last spring as I watched the separate pieces we had worked on come together as one show. Each member, from cast to crew and pit, had put countless hours into learning all the lines and making sure all of the scenes felt authentic.
Not everything about theatre is action, though. Some of my favorite memories happened when we weren’t performing at all. During tech week of The Lightning Thief, the lighting team took us through something called cue-to-cue. It’s when they review the show one moment at a time to make sure every lighting change is right and everybody is visible. The actors can spend 10 minutes or more on stage standing in one spot while the crew works their magic. It sounds pretty mind-numbing, and sometimes it was, but I remember becoming especially close with my friends that day. Nothing particularly important was happening for the actors on stage, but something very important happened for our friendships. That connection is one of the things I think is easy to miss during a 308 production, but it is also something you can feel through the production. The actors are what the audience sees. The kinship between all the people in Theatre 308 is what is most visible to us.
I also learned that theatre is a place where you’re constantly pushed to grow. In that same show, I was cast in a featured role, and my director, Tim Sorensen, encouraged me to put myself out there more. I remember being very nervous about this feedback, but I also knew he pushed me because he believed I could do more. By the time I performed that role, I had stopped worrying about the character so much and whether I looked silly, and started letting myself just enjoy the acting.
Theatre let me grow into my own person as well, because every character you play changes a small part of you, and every up and every down teaches you to hang in there. There were many rehearsals where it seemed like the show could be performed the next day, but there were also rehearsals where everything seemed to go wrong. There were days when everyone was tired and wanted to go home, and others when no one wanted to leave because they enjoyed themselves so much. The long rehearsals, frustrating moments, late nights and little victories became the memories we experienced together, the friendships we will carry with us. They are what 308 gives to every student.
When I think about my time at DHS, I know I’ll remember the performances, the songs, the costumes and the lights, but I think I’ll remember the moments in between just as much: sitting with friends, and pouring my heart out to somebody I barely knew a few months before. Theatre gives people a reason to stand together, create something together and spend enough time to really get to know each other. I joined Theatre 308 because I loved theatre, the music and acting; I stayed, auditioning for every show, because of the people and a community that feels like home.
Editor’s Note: Theatre 308 is Darien High School’s award-winning, student-led theatre group. They produce three major performances each year: a drama in November, a musical in March and a student-directed and produced one-act festival in June. This fall, they are bringing You Can’t Take It With You to Darien. For more information, including show dates, visit theatre308.org.
