LIMESTONE, Maine — Saturday night marked the last showing of Proof by students from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics. The show ran from Thursday to Saturday, and drew an estimated hundred people.
“I feel it went pretty well,” said Allison Emmerich, director of the Theater Program, “I’m proud of the cast in general.”
Proof was initially double cast, meaning that the cast consisted of four primaries and four understudies.
“We have such a small pool that we’re drawing from, so it was hard because we wanted to give the most people as much opportunity as possible, but we also wanted to get the characters right,” said Emmerich, “I hold all of my actors to high standards because I know that they’re capable if it, and I know Kiri is the same way.”
Kiri Strack-Grose was the assistant to the director.
“I’ve really enjoyed being assistant to the director,” said Strack-Grose, “I actually want to go into directing as a full time profession.”
Proof has one lead, Catherine, which was played by Molly Donlan.
“I can relate to Catherine since she’s in the shadow of Robert (Catherine’s father) because he is a math genius,” said Donlan, “Playing the role came pretty natural to me because my brother is kind of a math genius so I kind of feel in the shadow sometimes, especially since he came to MSSM before me.”
During production preparations, the understudies for Hal and Robert had to drop out of the play unexpectedly.
“I came in one day and said, ‘Ethan, you’re our only Hal now;’ Ethan had never acted before, so he was a little nervous,” said Emmerich, “Ethan’s come a long way, if you would have seen him from his audition to opening night it’s just amazing to see how far he’s come.”
“The six of them that are left have done phenomenally,” said Emmerich.
Though Emmerich thought that Proof would make for the perfect fall play, there was some controversy about whether or not it would happen.
“There’s a lot of [bad] language in this,” said Emmerich. According to Emmerich, she spoke with the dean and expressed that she did not want to change the content of the play. After reading the play for herself, the dean decided to plead Emmerich’s case to the executive director. The executive director approved that the play be performed without omission as long as all the literature distributed by the Almost Canada Theater company stated that the play contained adult language.
“We went with it, and it was wonderful,” said Emmerich. “One day Sammy Jelin [who played Robert] came in and said ‘Miss Emmerich, I just wanted to tell you that [the line in the play that states the largest Sophie Germain Prime] isn’t the largest Germain Prime anymore.’ I asked him if he wanted to change it and he said ‘no,’ because it would take 15 minutes just to say the new number.”
Though it would seem that three hours of play practice three times a week would infringe on study time, most of the students didn’t have a problem doing both.
“It’s hectic, but it’s normally pretty manageable,” said Strack-Grose.
Most students didn’t mind putting in the extra hours it took to learn the play.
“You need an escape from the stress of the homework and everything else, and some people find it in theater,” said Donlan.
During the spring musical, Strack-Grouse plans on further expanding her resume.
“Last year I was an actor, costumer, techie, and assistant stage manager. This year I’m the assistant director, and next semester I’m going to be choreographer. The musical is the next item on the ACT agenda; the musical is set to take place in early spring.
ACT has not decided on a musical at this point in time.
“We haven’t obtained royalties yet,” said Emmerich, “but some of the musicals that we are looking at are The Robber Bridegroom and Little Shop of Horrors; we’re also looking at Singing in the Rain or maybe another classic.”
If everything goes as planned, the musical will consist of students from both MSSM and Limestone High School.
“We’re trying to combine the schools for the musical because we share a lot of the facilities and I’ve really been working with their administration over there to get their students involved in the musical, so we’ll see how that goes.” Emmerich said, “I’ll open auditions up to both schools and cast the best people who come out for the show.”
The spring musical expects to cast 20 to 25 students.
The production of Proof would not have been possible if not for those working behind the scenes, including assistant stage manager Elizabeth Coyne, stage manager Ashley Hunt, technical director Katherine Spring, sound designer Israel Moreno, and lighting designer Evanne Carter.
