CCS THEATER DEPARTMENT
The Theater Department at Cincinnati Christian Schools is an integral part of the school community. From the classroom to the stage, CCS performers expect to meet the highest standards of excellence. That standard of excellence is a trust handed down from class to class, a standard that underclassmen are eager to meet and alumni are proud to have held.
Drama Courses
The drama classes offered at CCS are Performance Theater and Technical Theater. These courses may be taken each year that the student’s schedule allows.
Performance Theater is an acting class which ranges from introduction to acting to advanced training depending on the prior skills of the student. The course has regular exercises in impromptu acting, pantomime and dramatic interpretation. In addition, the course has full units of choreography, accent/dialects and stage combat.
Technical Theater class exists primarily to assist in the production of the school’s plays. This includes set construction, make-up, lighting, sound, stage crew and other duties. All Technical Theater students are required to participate in the performance of both the fall and spring shows, either as cast or crew.
The Shows
CCS performs two theatrical productions each year. The shows are cast from open auditions. All students in grades 9-12 may audition for both shows. Junior High students may audition for the spring musical and occasionally elementary students are invited to audition.
The fall show is usually smaller in scale and is performed at the Fairfield Community Theater. Auditions are held during the first week of August.
The spring production is a major Broadway musical performed at the Aronoff Center in downtown Cincinnati. These shows audition in December.
The Cappies
The CCS Theater Department is a charter member of the Critics and Awards Program of Cincinnati, the “Cappies”. The Cappies, is a program through which high school theater and journalism students are trained as critics, attend shows at other schools, write reviews, and publish those reviews in local newspapers like Cincinnati Enquirer.
At the end of the year, the student critics vote for awards that are presented at a formal Cappies Gala. Many CCS performers have been nominated for Cappies awards and several have won.
Over 60 Cappies reviews were written about our recent production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. Cappies mentors chose the review by Teddy Gumbleton from St. Xavier as the best written. Here is his review of our show.
Teddy Gumbleton, St. Xavier High School
Submitted for publication to Cincinnati Enquirer
New York City. The center of the universe. For someone who wants to live a modern life, there is no where else in the world that is better than New York. However, New York is not the easiest place to live in and things may not go according to plan. Cincinnati Christian School’s production of Thoroughly Modern Millie tells of one young girl’s adventure in this vibrant city.
Thoroughly Modern Millie tells the story of Millie Dillmount, a young country girl who moves to New York in hopes of finding a ‘modern’ marriage; one made for wealth and convenience, not love. On her journey she meets a colorful cast of characters who help her shed her naïve notions about the world and she also stumbles across an underground slavery ring which she must help stop.
Kelsey Simmons, who played the role of Millie, gave a great performance. She brought a lot of spunk and liveliness to her role. She also was strong in showing Millie’s struggle as she starts falling for the charming, but poor, scallywag, Jimmy Smith. Playing the role was James Blanchard, who also gave a strong performance. His vocals were among the best in the show especially in his song, “What Do I Need with Love?”
As Mrs. Meers, the woman in charge of the slavery ring, Nicole Gaige gave an outstanding performance. She nailed both her sinister character and her Chinese disguise and created some of the best comic moments in the show. Equally hysterical were her two Chinese servants, Bun Foo and Ching Ho (Brittany Mascara & Morgan Pinkston respectively). Although they spoke mostly in Chinese, they very effectively used mannerisms and facial expressions to bring a tremendous amount of humor to every scene they were in. Gaige, Mascara, and Pinkston, also did a terrific job of playing off one another and their group energy was particularly strong in the song “Muqin”.
The show’s terrific choreography was done almost entirely by Anne Schmitt. She single handedly choreographed 12 of the shows 14 numbers. She designed dances that were vibrant and contributed a great deal to the overall energy of the show. And as Miss Flannery, Alli Grahl executed very effectively some of the shows more complicated steps.
The sets, designed by Dustin Baumann, Adam Gottula, and Nick Pater, were wonderful. They successfully captured the vitality of the 1920s. They were rather elaborate, yet at the same time, they were designed in a way which made them very easy to move during scene changes.
With its high energy cast and impressive sets and choreography, Cincinnati Christian School’s production of Thoroughly Modern Millie was a truly wonderful show.
For more information about the Cappies visit: http://www.cappies.com/cin/