TItle: Phones are Ringing With OHS’ “An Inspector Calls”
On May 1, OHS’ Spring Play, An Inspector Calls opens house to the public from Thursday, May 1 to Sunday, May 4.
The An Inspector Calls cast, crew and directors have been trying to get ready and patch up any mistakes before opening night. An Inspector Calls is about a family celebrating the engagement of their daughter to a nice young man. It’s 1912 in London and they are having a wonderful dinner, when suddenly an inspector comes to the door, and the inspector tells them that a girl by the name of Eva Smith has just died in the hospital from drinking disinfectant. And he has a series of questions to ask them about their involvement with her death, and it turns out that each of them, in their own way, had some involvement in her death.
Eitrheim said, “We haven’t had a whole lot of time to put this show together. We had a big interruption with spring break, and we were barely cast before spring break.” The biggest stressor for Eitrheim has been the time constraints with spring break and prom being in the way mixed with already having a short amount of time to get it ready by, which has been about a month. Senior Johnathan Kirkham plays Inspector Goole and his character is kind of a protective angel. He’s like the poor man’s champion. Kirkham said, “The most stressful thing has been time constraints. It’s easily the shortest we’ve ever had to do a show, we’ve had to go a long way in such a short amount of time, and it’s been difficult and very stressful.”
His favorite part of the show is where he gets to let everything go and shout. Kirkham believes it is fun getting to yell because he’s done it before with past villainous characters. But he also believes it is fun to get to be on the protagonist side of the show and still get to shout and make his mark as a heroic presence on stage. This show is very significant to the cast and crew because it’s a show that has a real deep and well meaning message. But for Kirkham, getting to do such a show and being the spokesperson of that message is amazing to him and it’s a great show to end off on with this being his last time acting on that stage.
Issues such as prom and spring break have gotten in the way of the production. The cast, crew and directors are working towards the goal of being ready for opening night. There have been some late nights. Despite these issues, Eitrheim is feeling great about the show. WIth it being a compelling work of art and an interesting show.
If anything were to go wrong in the show, the cast would be able to cover it up. There are special tech elements included in the show, many of which will be a surprise for the audience. and they’ll be using some fog and cool lights with some effects during the show. These jobs could be hard to manage because with the lights, the light board operator might have to watch for a cue that is physically shown rather than a cue word. But with the fog, there were issues with the fog machine in the fall play, The Play That Goes Wrong where they used a lot more fog than they wanted and were worried about setting off the fire alarms. There was also a point where there was too little fog because the fog machine shut off due to a backstage issue.
Eitrheim is looking forward to seeing how the audience reacts to the play due to its powerful message. Eitrheim said, “The inspector at one point, turns to the audience and says, ‘We are responsible for each other. We do not live alone.’” This standout line in the play gives the idea that we live in a world with other people that we need to be careful, conscious and thoughtful of. This message is one that is all too necessary in today’s world.
On the crew side of things, with getting their jobs really close to opening night, it’s been stressful learning jobs and doing techs.
Avery Dunn is the stage manager of the show. She is the one who runs the entire show. Her job consists of calling cues and making sure people are pressing the right buttons for those cues backstage. She’s usually up in the booth, but backstage, they have these headsets where she can tell people backstage what they have to do and how to fix a problem and she can send people down to do something to fix like a speaker.Dunn mentioned how the most stressful part of this show has been the actors with skipping pages but it’s getting close to a ready show. Either that or time because it hasn’t been on their side. She’s most excited about this one cue that’s going to be a surprise for the audience and she feels great and that they are going to have a great show but they need to kick it into gear and once they do that it will be a great show.
For the cast, time is one thing they have not had. They’ve only had a month to get memorized and ready for opening night. But they have been progressing and getting more and more ready for opening night and are just about ready for opening night.
