Gabe Russell
Theater hasn’t always been a passion of mine. I originally started doing theater because I was super into music and singing and that led me to musicals. I was a part of my first musical when I was eleven, and it was mind blowing. I grew a love that would come to take over a large portion of my life.
My name is Gabriel Russell and I am the director of Stressed by Alan Hehnel. I went into this with a confidence that you think would be considered arrogance, and you’d be right! I was very quickly gut punched with the amount of work that was ahead of me and my cast; however, given time as well as dedication, we overcame a number of obstacles and were able to put on this production.
I’d like to personally thank each of my cast members. Iz, Makayla, Gracie, and Chad: thank you. You have each in your own way made this production a memory that will be burned into my very synapses for the rest of my theatrical career. I hope you each continue to do theater, and if you don’t then I hope that you excel in whatever career you choose to follow, cause I know you can. Thank you as well to the people who came tonight to support our theater department and thank you for supporting my cast as well as me.
Alyson Sharp
Circus Bizercus is a comedy show that was written by a few students a couple of years ago. Everything didn’t go as planned but I am so proud of how everyone handled it. We are very excited for you to see the show and how hard everyone has been working.
Tyson Bentley
When I found out that I would be directing I was both nervous and excited. Nervous about the unknown, but also really excited about the unknown. This is my first time doing anything like this and also a lot of my cast’s first time being on stage. Although some days were more stressful than others, It’s been such a joy getting to work with such amazing people and being able to learn so much from them; we’ve really helped each other grow both as people and as performers.
When I read Fortress I knew almost instantly that it was a story I wanted to tell. The themes of betrayal, sadness, and love are things we can all relate to. It’s been such an honor to be able to portray these things on a scale like this and hopefully, in some way, you can relate to these characters.
Thank you so much to my whole cast for being so willing to tell this story. Thank you to Mr. Bales for being a great mentor throughout this whole process. And thank you to all of the crew for putting in so much time to make this show what it is, I seriously couldn’t have done it without any of you.
To quote from Fortress, “Maybe there’s the possibility for a whole truck-load of happiness, too… I figure we’ve got about a 50/50 chance, and I can live with those odds.”
