As the lights illuminate the greyscale flower shop, seniors Audrey Statler (Audrey), Wren Hilburn (Mr. Mushnik), and Eli Aikman (Seymour Krelborn) can all be seen standing around the humongous Audrey II puppet in the spring musical “Little Shop of Horrors”.
“There were a lot of technical elements to this show,” director and theatre teacher Chris Palmer said.
This was the first time running Little Shop of Horrors since 2012, it was a highly anticipated show that Palmer had a vision for.
That vision was a colorless production aside from the alien-like puppets, which slowly overtook the shop. Everything from costumes to the walls was all greyscale.
“Every show that I direct is unique,” Palmer said. “They all kind of have things that stand out to me. For this one in particular, it was a lot of people stepping outside of their comfort zone, doing things that maybe they either hadn’t done before or that they weren’t quite sure they could do in the first place.”
Technical director and theatre teacher Ben Bartlett, who led the restoration of the Audrey II plants, said he felt the challenge as well.
“When we announced that we wanted to do the show, we knew that we’d have to do some refurbishing,” Bartlett said. “I didn’t know exactly what that would entail, but I did some research online and used the knowledge of what I kind of gathered while using what we had left over from the little shop puppets.”
The original plants were built by Sedwan Hooks, a senior at the time of the production, who made it his senior project. Since then, they kept the plants in storage aside from renting them out to other schools until they were in disrepair.
Bartlett instructed the puppet crew in adding the details the plants needed. Comprised of senior Marissa Oglesby, juniors Rye Martsof and Lillian Magaña, sophomore Emery Bailey and freshman Claire Poggie, the crew painted details and made all of the teeth on all four puppets.
With challenging technical aspects, the cast also worked with complicated music too.
“Learning all the songs was really hard,” Aikman said. “I went into it knowing the musical beforehand, so I thought it would be really easy, but when we started learning the music, I realized I didn’t know any of it.”
Aikman played Seymour Krelborn, a shy kid who works at a flower shop with his boss and a girl that he has a crush on named Audrey. He doesn’t get treated very well, but he does whatever he can to get what he wants.
With a small cast of only 11 members and the dozens of kids who came to auditions, Aikman said he was shocked to learn his leading role.
“I’ve never been a lead before,” Aikman said. “It was fun getting to be a part of this show with my friends and be on stage with them for my senior show.”
Although this wasn’t the first production of Little Shop, the most recent brought a new light to the show.
The production sold out three out of five show days, which hasn’t happened in years.
“I’m really proud of the show,” Palmer said. “The kids and my colleague, Bartlett, allowed me to have more space to direct in the way that I wanted to. It was a group effort, I felt like everyone was moving in the same direction, which showed in the end product.” story by stella mages
