During Camryn Pitts’s first year as White Station High School’s (WSHS) theater director, she decided to include vice principal Michael Ayers in “Mean Girls.” She wanted to show the work the theater department puts into their productions and keep the administration involved in the happenings. After “Mean Girls,” Pitts decided to allow all teachers to participate in the spring musicals as ensemble members.
“I think it’s been really fun just to see certain teachers get out of their comfort zone, like Mr. Ayers,” Pitts said. “He was a band director, so he is used to performing. But going up on stage, saying lines, and doing a little bit of singing and dancing is a very different thing than playing an instrument or directing a band.”
Melissa Anderson began her WSHS theater career in “Mamma Mia!” She continued her involvement in the theater program as an assistant director to Pitts for “Beetlejuice Jr.” and “Something Rotten,” helping out with anything Pitts needs, including set design. She is also currently in Theatre Memphis’s “Mamma Mia!” as a pit singer and hopes to do other shows in the future.
“At first, I was busy with life, [especially my] kids,” Anderson said. “Well, all my kids are grown [now], so I thought, ‘I might as well see what it’s like [to do theater] again because I always enjoyed it before.’ I did, and now I’ve been doing all kinds of [shows].”
The theater department’s upcoming production is “Something Rotten,” a musical following the Bottom brothers who are competing with William Shakespeare in Renaissance England. The cast and crew rehearse four days a week during the early stages of production, but in the time leading up to the show, they can rehearse up to six days a week.
“Some days we’re working on a musical number, so it’ll be choreography and blocking, and other days we’re in the choir room working on the actual songs,” Molly Oster, another teacher in the ensemble, said. “It just kind of depends [on] what’s on the schedule for that day — what we need to work on.”
A former British literature teacher and fan of the show, Oster was ecstatic when she saw that the theater department was putting on “Something Rotten” and quickly joined the cast. She saw it performed at the Orpheum theater when it toured in 2018. Besides being a fan of the show, Oster was also a part of the theater department during her time as a student at WSHS and greatly enjoyed it.
“I liked the people,” Oster said. “Our theater teacher when I was a student here, Ms. Jefferson, I was really close with her. It was one of those things where you kind of latch onto a teacher — you do whatever they do. I had been in her theater class my freshman year and would just participate in the shows, usually more backstage stuff, and a lot of my friends were a part of the program. It was just enjoyable.”
Since she started including teachers in the musical, Pitts has noticed the positives for both students and faculty. Teachers see students’ effort and dedication to theater, and students see teachers as something other than authority figures.
“I think that anybody in the faculty should give it a shot at least once because it’s very good and fun and rewarding, and you get to know these students in a very different way,” Anderson said. “They just love the fact that the teachers were going to do something like this, and I’ve gotten very close with a bunch of [students] that I never would’ve known otherwise.”