As actors began to rehearse in late fall for “The Curious Savage,” a play written by John Patrick, North’s theater department offered another opportunity for students to be involved in the winter play: an art competition. Student artists were given the chance to submit a seascape painting that would be featured on stage towards the end of the production.
Sophomore Lynn Alvarez and freshman Emmy Elliott both won the competition, each receiving a gift card, free tickets to the show and the opportunity to see their piece displayed during the play.
“There’s a moment at the very end of the show where we are able to see the world through a different lens, and during that specific moment is when we get to see the beautiful seascape paintings that have been turned into us from the competition,” said Drew Echales, auditorium and theater production manager.
With the help of Theatre Director Ryan Colton, Technical Director Joey Hawking and Assistant Principal of Student Life Rebecca La Porta, Echales created the art competition to involve students who are not part of the theater department in the show.
“When I came into the school this fall, one of my number one goals was to be able to do as much outreach to the rest of the school outside of the theater department as possible,” said Echales. “For the show ‘The Curious Savage,’ we have an opportunity to showcase some art, and I thought to myself, what a perfect opportunity for us to reach out to the very talented students in the art department.”
The students were given very loose guidelines based on the play’s script as Echales wanted them to have as much artistic freedom as possible.
“This particular script of ‘The Curious Savage’ by John Patrick gave us a half sentence description of what it is supposed to be, which is, and I quote, ‘a beautiful seascape painting,’” said Echales. “Everything else was truly up to interpretation: color, materials, the medium in which they do this…The students really just got to take it and do what they wanted to do.”
Drawing from the themes of family and greed found in “The Curious Savage,” Alvarez created her piece using mainly acrylic paint.
“Reading the overview, it was about this lady finding true family and people who respected her when her family was just out for her money,” said Alvarez, “so I made a crown sinking in water and a rough sea.”
Elliott took a slightly different approach, using both acrylic paint and alcohol markers to create a lighthouse.
“[My painting is of] a lighthouse, and in the background is an ocean,” said Elliott. “I used alcohol markers for the lighthouse to kind of get some better details in there since I’m better with markers rather than the paints. And then for most of the background pieces, I used brushes.”
As someone with little past experience in painting, the competition presented a fun opportunity for Elliott.
“I wanted to challenge myself, mostly because I’ve never done canvas and paint or anything, and I just thought that it’d be a fun challenge,” said Elliott. “I just wanted to see how it [went] and see if I could create something that I was proud of.”
Despite initial interest in the competition, which students found out about from posters, emails and art club promotions, there were ultimately few final submissions.
“We definitely had some interest with students reaching out and asking some questions,” said Echales. “We ended up not getting a ton of submissions in, and I think that is due to us not being able to provide the art supplies.”
In future years, Echales hopes to continue reaching out to different groups at North so that all students can have the opportunity to be involved in theater.
“[In the future,] if there’s a show that requires food on stage, we might ask if someone is interested in learning to cook certain recipes and have them be featured on stage. Or I know there’s a fashion club in school, so I might be reaching out to them to see if they have an interest in helping out with costumes and different things like that,” said Echales. “I’m really hoping that every show that we do, starting next year, will have an element like this that we can invite a different type of student to come in and help us with something.”
