About GWHS Eagle Eye
Attention: It’s Free! An Interview with the Director
By: Cate Smith
Washington’s 2024 fall play opens on Oct. 17. “Attention: It’s Free!” is a student-written show, created with a process called devised theater. Lucy Rydell, the new drama teacher and director of the show, shares about the process of auditioning, writing, rehearsing, and more.
Rydell is a graduate of Boston University as a theater arts major. During her time in school she learned about unique ways for creating a production, one of them being devised theater. It’s a system where you start the production process with nothing and the ensemble creates the story themselves. “It would have been a different show if any single one of these students wasn’t in this company,” Rydell said, referring to her team of students who are working hard to put the story together.
This is a significant departure from the fall productions Washington has had in previous years. Last year, the students performed “Clue,” a well-known show written by Sandy Rustin, adapted from the film by Jonathan Lynn. The year before it was “She Kills Monsters,” a slightly lesser-known but still professional show written by Qui Nguyen. This year's production will be a pure expression of the minds of the students who created it and they are extremely excited to show it off.
The script has not been completely finalized yet, but Rydell was able to share a brief summary about what to expect. In her words, “a once-ordinary office is thrown into survival mode when employees start being terminated to cut costs, with shocking consequences.”
The crew for “Attention: It’s Free!” consists of performers, designers, and script writers. Rehearsals take place every school night until 5 or 6 p.m. “[The actors] come to rehearsal and they put up scenes on their feet every day that our script writers created the night before, the day before,” Rydell said. Each day they lay out all the scenes they’ve written, merging similar ones, cutting unnecessary parts, and assigning writers to new scenes they need created. The entire process from auditions to opening night will be less than eight weeks.
Rydell stresses the importance of creativity in this age of AI. She is taking advantage of this production to share with her students the value of being well rounded, collaborative theater artists that can go out and create their own work. Her belief is that in this day and age, the world needs “artists that can do it all and make the art happen because they can understand the scope of it.”
At this point in time, they are in the refine-and-revise process of script creation and as of Sept. 20, they hadn’t even cast the roles yet! However, even with opening night less than a month away, Rydell says they are right on schedule.
“Attention: It’s Free!” opens Thursday, Oct. 17 at 4:15 p.m. Its performance schedule spans two weekends with a total of six shows. The other dates are Oct. 18, 24, 25, and 26 with a sixth period show on the 23. No tickets required, all performances are free! Support Washington’s theater department by stopping by to catch a performance.