Tualatin High School’s (TuHS) theater department puts a great amount of effort into their productions, as proven when they won first place for Oregon Main Stage Performance for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. These efforts once again are seen through their spring production, The Addams Family Musical. Multiple actors and behind-the-scenes crew are winners in other state categories, as well. Individuals also won at state for their particular areas of focus, such as sound design.
Watching the play, my companion and I were in awe of the TuHS students’ talent. The attention to detail in costuming, the subtle but effective humorous pauses in between lines to give the audience time to laugh, and the overall sheer quality of the production were phenomenal. Peers we know and love were blanketed in the complexities of their characters, lost to them. Seeing the tech crew behind a camera and the band and orchestra playing the perfectly timed score, we began to wonder what it took to put this show on.
We gained insight to bring us closer to understanding all the work put into the two-hour show before us from TuHS senior Anya Ramos, who made a huge contribution to the hair and makeup for The Addams Family cast.
“I did hair and make-up because most of the costumes were done by the actors themselves; the white costumes of the ancestors they chose themselves. We put people’s wigs on for them, and we did their makeup. We did a lot of makeup to look dead,” Ramos said.
Ramos also described the environment behind the scenes of the production.
“It’s such a lively environment, and there’s so much going on. There’s people singing, and there’s people laughing and there’s people making jokes and just talking and being civil to each other. It’s such a nice change from the outside world. You come in here and people like each other,” Anya added.“It’s so refreshing. This is a group of people that chooses to be together and to be here every day, choosing to work with these people, and they genuinely love it. It can be exhausting, but it’s worth it.”
With newfound knowledge of the comfort that can be found within all the chaos that comes with intensive projects such as The Addams Family, and the overwhelming amount of time and care put into it, we view the production as more than just a production. We see it as an experience for those working on it, as well as those watching.
