Lucy Walker and Caleb Chrisohon are members of the Playmakers cast. Their show "Our Place" will have an encore performance on November 15, weather permitting.
Photo Credit: Camryn Pruess, Watauga Yearbook
The Watauga High School Playmakers is a highly known and accomplished group of actors. Each year, the ensemble competes at a regional-level competition called NCTC (North Carolina Theatre Conference). At this highly competitive event, schools from across North Carolina share their performance pieces and receive feedback from adjudicators. If the piece presented places high enough, then the group is able to move on to states. This year, The Playmakers have been working on a show called "Our Place."
"Our Place" is a play that takes place on a dock. Throughout the show, families and friends arrive at the dock to talk. Although the different scenes may not have so much to do with each other, there is one place that connects them all, the dock.
“I play Brenda, I’m the mom in the show. There are six scenes in the show that all take place on the same dock, but don’t necessarily have a lot to do with each other,” said Hannah Rabinowitz, a junior and first-year Playmaker. “There’s one scene where there is a daughter taking her dad who has Alzheimer's and they are kind of reminiscing on the old times on the dock. There’s also a scene with a brother-sister duo, so a lot of the scenes aren’t connected, but they are connected by the dock.”
Over two months, the Playmakers block the scenes, memorize lines, and get costumes together, among many other things to get their show regionals ready for NCTC.
“We really just jumped right into what we want our set to look like, and where do we want who to enter when? And then line memorization of course, that was also one of the first things that we had to just know. And then as things became finer, there came costumes, and that was super fun!” said Emma Rasco, a sophomore and first-year playmaker.
Also at NCTC, Emma Rasco and Ray Christian won awards for their excellence in acting. Alex Newmark won an award for excellence in stage management. Brittany Daniel won excellence in sound design. Ms. Sarah Miller won outstanding director. The ensemble as a whole also won the audience’s choice award, and they got a superior rating, which is the highest rating at NCTC.
“The award that I won was excellence in acting, and that was awarded to I think ten or eleven individuals," said Rasco. "It was sort of just a recognition for talent, but there were so many people who I thought really deserved excellence in acting as well."
At the 2022 NCTC, the Playmakers competed against fifteen other schools, and along with one other school, the Playmakers will have the opportunity to compete again at states. Although the Playmakers are excited to once again showcase their talents at states, there is still lots of work to be done before states.
"We have already jumped right back into rehearsals," said Rabinowitz. "We have to actually refigure our whole show because the stage is different than it was at regionals. This also means that we have to get back into the feel of doing the same show but in a slightly different way. We’ve also had to adjust our set a little bit. So overall, just adjusting everything to make it work."
As the Playmakers get ready for states, they continue to love the work that they are doing.
“I love being a Playmaker because we have a wonderful community, everyone just loves and respects each other so much," said Rabinowitz. "I just have so much joy going to the Playmakers rehearsal.”
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