Theater teacher Jeff Lady is the director and producer of the plays at GEHS. According to Lady, his role is to bring all of the elements of a play together to make them work as a whole.

When it comes to producing a school play there are many attributes that have to be taken into consideration. According to Lady the biggest aspect is choosing character roles. Lady said he has to look at a smorgasbord of talented students but can only select a handful to be lead roles.

“Talent always plays the biggest part in casting,” Lady said, “because you need to put out the best product you can for the audience. However, I also look at past experience and past work ethic when making my decision. Sometimes you have to wing it when you have all new kids and have never seen what they do on stage.”

There are other attributes that go into choosing a student for a character, Lady said. The student needs to fit the physical appearance of the character being played. A third option to be considered is previous experience. This is deciding whether or not the student has the ability to play a certain character with certain actions and particular personality aspects.

The last facet in selecting students for roles is looking at their previous actions in and outside of the classroom. According to Lady, this is a big consideration because choosing a student who is known to procrastinate might set the whole play behind, while choosing a student who wants to be in charge of everything may create tension within the cast.

There are many factors that go into deciding whether or not a play can be produced. There are not specific rules on what is allowed to be done; it is more or less a mutual decision.

When organizing a school production, there are certain rules to follow for approval. Lady said, yes, there is some leniency on what type of plays can be done, but guidelines for appropriateness are essential, of which are done by the principles.

First, Lady comes up with ideas about what play he would like to produce. Then, principal Tim Brady, associate principal Heather Peeke and Lady schedule a meeting to go over ideas. Even though they may agree on a play, the availability of the rights to the production also contributes to the decision.

“We originally wanted to do ‘The Sound of Music’, but due to CBS doing a remake of the play with Carrie Underwood, we were unable to get rights to do it as well,” Peeke said, “so we decided on ‘Guys and Dolls.’”

Legal considerations are not all that goes into making a school production. Since GEHS is the only high school in the Gardner-Edgerton area, the community attends many school events; therefore, any production the school puts on has to be entertaining and appropriate for people of all ages.

“We also have to appeal to the masses,” Peeke said, “it needs to be family friendly and it never fails to do a classic that everyone knows.”

Since a play requires such dedication and outside-of-school time and the students at GEHS being determined to pull it off, it creates a very tight bond and relationship between the production team. Sophomore Connor Johnston says that how much everyone cares about each other is his favorite part.