Recently, there’s been new actions made by Ayala administration which limit the amount of students who are able to be excused from classrooms on days when their extracurriculars may need them. So far this has affected students in the United Student Body Council’s (USB) from working on the school’s November “Peanuts” rally and The Ayala Theatre Company from working on their play, “The Play that Goes Wrong.”
Though the “Peanuts” rally was received in positive light, there were added difficulties due to the recent actions made from these actions.
“Normally for a rally day, all of the USB students would be excused the entire day and [now] that was no longer an option,” USB advisor Ms. Hayley Thompson said. “A small percentage of the students were excused the entire day. The rest of them were only excused for the run through and clean up, and it definitely made our schedule much tighter.”
Students were upset about this sudden change in preparation for the school’s rally. Many students expected to be excused from class to work on school rallies, but were instead met with uncertain expectations.
“[There were] definitely a lot of feuds and arguments between people especially because not all of the students were at their jobs,” USB student Klaren Suh (12) said. “[Though] the quality wasn’t affected, we were very limited on time so it was really hard for those who were excused from their class to do double the workload. I definitely think how it was before would be better especially because we had to do a lot of the work that people were supposed to do but couldn’t do.”
Administration’s recent actions also signficiantly affected Ayala Theater Company’s production on their recent satire-comedy play, “The Play that Goes Wrong.”
“Originally we would be able to pull all students out of class for the rehearsal by everyone that was involved in the production, and now we can [only] do 25% of total participants per class period,” Ayala Theater Director Mrs. Madeline Sherratt said.
Like students in USB, being able to be excused from class on the day of events was important, but in this play, being unable to was much more detrimental. Typically students would be able to tend to their department goals with more time, however the change has led into the inability to not only comfortably prepare, but also comfortably rehearse. Administration cutting the amount of students being able to work also cut the amount of time students were able to craft the stage. This ultimately led to the stage being finished after their dress rehersal, a day before opening night.
“The entire day to rehearse was definitely critical to all our past productions [to tie] up all the loose ends,” Head of Lighting Jasmine Houde (12) said. “Our opening night definitely suffered because it was essentially our first dress rehearsal when we should have had it during the day.”
This setback in being able to finish the stage was caused by how “The Play that Goes Wrong” requires much preparation and planned coordination to properly execute. One major factor in this execution is the play’s moving props, particularly the collapsing wooden walls. If these walls are not meticulously crafted and thoroughly coordinated when the walls fall forwards, it increases the likeliness of prop malfunctions and risks the safety of actors.
“We were not able to be as prepared for it as we would have been,” Technical Director Devi Bhatt (12) said. ” Especially considering [that on] opening night, we had a pretty big injury where one of our actors had to go to the ER. She got whiplash from a stunt that we weren’t able to rehearse properly.”
Aside from the injury, “The Play that Goes Wrong” had gone right in the ways that they hoped it to be.
Currently, there is some communication between Ayala administration and the affected extracurriculars in order to ensure a more smooth workflow in the future, with some agreement for allowing all theater students being able to be excused during their fifth and sixth periods.
