This school year, North’s Drama Club and Tech Crew have combined into one club, now known as the SCN Theater Club. 

The faculty advisers for the club, Joe Pietrie and Ryan Colton, made the decision to integrate the original clubs into one group in the spring of 2023 so that there would be a stronger connection between all parts of the theater. Originally, Pietrie was the adviser of Tech Crew, and Colton was the adviser of Drama Club. 

“Drama club was always supposed to be about all of theater, not just performance-based,” said Colton. “It just seemed like a lot of the students who were involved were mostly performance-based students who wanted to be on-the-stage actors, performers, singers, musicians, but never really the tech end of it.”

The decision to merge the clubs was intended to help unify the components of theater that felt previously detached from one another. 

Although the consolidation of the two original groups seemed like a big change, the club hasn’t deviated much from how they were originally run, according to Colton. Club meetings now incorporate parts of what both Tech Crew and Drama Club had specialized in before the merge. 

“We’re trying to implement more of all theater in the club and not just focus more on improv and performance,” said Colton.

This was new for both of the club’s members, but they were still able to come together to create a willing and collaborative group.

This club has an equal number of leaders from both of the former clubs to keep both sides’ priorities even and fair. 

“One of the things that we did is at the end of last year…

we voted for Drama Club leaders for this year, and then Tech Club voted for their leaders for Tech Club. And then what we did is we combined them into eight leaders for our current SCN Theater Program. So collectively, we’re bringing more of the tech elements and the performance element together so that it’s a better effort of combining both of those elements, instead of it just being performance based,” said Colton. 

While some members were unsure of what was to come for the club this upcoming year, they were able to come together to create a new and aggregated group. 

“I think they were excited for a change. I think they were interested in trying something new. I think they were just hesitant to figure out what it was going to look like and nervous because we put it back into our eight leaders hands and [said] let’s do this together… So I think they were hesitant, but excited,” said Pietrie. 

Although the new club hasn’t had many meetings yet, members are glad to have the opportunity to work together in a tighter community. 

“I think it’s definitely good because everyone’s seeing each other more often; we’ll create stronger bonds,” said Sophia Kummer, senior board member of the SCN Theater Club. 

For those who are interested in joining the SCN Theater Club, meetings are after school every Tuesday in room 133. 

“Just show up,” said Colton.  “You don’t have to be a performer. You don’t even have to participate in any of our theatrical productions. It’s just time to get together and be social and have fun doing theater stuff.”