by Mica Hart
In the seats to my right six high school students lean forward, eyes glued on the emotional scene. To my left, I see the same thing. The whole audience is rapt in this shared experience.
On Friday, September 16th, twelve Ouray High School students departed on a mini-bus for Denver, where they watched four professional theater productions over the course of three days.
As small town residents, many of the students appreciated the opportunity to explore a big city. For sophomore Chloe Kiparsky, who grew up in Berkeley, CA, being in a metropolitan area again as a small town person, she was pleasantly surprised to be “super excited” to “be around a bunch of people that [she] didn’t know.” Senior Cason Coats loved gazing at the skyscrapers, where he realized that ”architecture itself is an art form.” Senior Morgan Clark simply felt reassured that “there are places for you everywhere” and she was “really grateful for the opportunity” to go to the city at a low cost.
The plays were the main attraction, however. Students loved the opportunity to see what Chloe called “large scale productions.” Morgan was excited to see that acting “for a career… is achievable.”
The four productions were “The Children,” “Into the Woods,” “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” and “The Chinese Lady.” In all of them, Cason was amazed at “how far people can go with telling a story.” He felt “everything was timed so perfectly, and so accurately.” The plays all helped the students see new and diverse perspectives.
Many of the students had acted in a junior version of the musical “Into the Woods,” and were enamored with the full, professional production of it. Freshman Brooke Edder, who had never been on the theater trip before, loved all of the singing and felt the song “‘Agony’ was the best thing ever.” She “was crying laughter” by the end of it. It was her favorite moment of the trip.
As much fun as “Into the Woods” was, many loved the intense, emotional, and dark production of “Heroes of the Fourth Turning.” On the bus home from the theater the evening after watching it, many students agreed with Cason that the play “was phenomenal” and that it “did a really good job of capturing the contrasting and contradicting feelings of the characters,” as Morgan reflected. “Heroes of the Fourth Turning'' was extremely powerful for me as well, and I valued the insight it provided into the emotional reasoning of people I would not otherwise understand.
Chloe felt similarly about “The Children.” She loved that “the characters came to life and went through the entire cycle of human emotion. It was so well done,” she said, “and it ended so beautifully.”
On the final day of the trip, the students traveled downtown to see “The Chinese Lady” after exploring the Denver Art Museum. Cason loved seeing Atung on stage because, as he said, it felt like a very real moment when he was having a vulnerable moment telling the audience his thoughts on America. Morgan enjoyed viewing the journey Afung Moy went on in her perception of America.
This was all possible because of a generous grant from the Mount Sneffels Educational Foundation.
Some students had worried that the journey might create intense social dynamics, but after the trip all of them said the amazing group and the joy of seeing professional productions made for a delightful trip. As Morgan put it, “everybody came together and hung out.”