Last year, Westford Academy Theater Arts (WATA) was selected as one of 29 programs in the country, and the only school in the state, to earn the production rights to the Broadway play ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.’ In the lead up to their performances, which will last from Oct. 31 to Nov. 10, WATA will be crafting Harry Potter’s world of magic using technical elements and practical effects to their advantage.
Actors in this play include sophomore Oliver Holway as Albus Potter, seniors DJ Maillet as Harry Potter, Keira Greiner as Ginny Potter, Tyler Santos as James Potter, junior Lacey Fraser as Lily Potter, senior Campbell Twitchell as Draco Malfoy, freshman Korben Lee as Scorpius Malfoy, junior Viktoria Kariuki as Hermione Granger, senior Ethan Mandile as Ron Weasley, sophomore Maya Galli as Rose Granger-Weasley, and senior Aubrie Rose as Delphi Diggory, among others.
According to WATA artistic director Michael Towers and director of the play Maggie Sulka, the importance of the technical side of this production is elevated more than the average play due to the magical effects. A lot goes into a production of this kind in order to make the magic on stage appear believable to the audience. The importance of the technical features is reflected by the ratio of students performing to the number of students working behind the scenes, with 40-50 students who actually step on stage and around another 50 students who are exclusively backstage and technical workers.
Many of the tech and stage designing crew members are feeling the complexity of the magical effects. In fact, an entire portion of the backstage team as well as the ensemble is dedicated to creating illusions that immerse the audience to the fullest extent.
“Something that these students in particular are really good at doing is magic that is employed by use of an ensemble because they are so in tune with each other,” Sulka said. “We have a team of upperclassmen who are the ‘illusion team,’ and [they are] figuring out all the different ways that they could go about certain magical moments.”
According to Sulka, one of the most difficult magical moments to execute takes place in the polyjuice potion scene. Polyjuice potion is a magical concoction that
transforms the user by giving them the appearance of another person. Previously, this concept was used in the books and in the high budget films, but now it has to be pulled off in front of a live audience, an effect which the technical team is responsible for.
“[This scene] is going to take the ensemble, it’s going to take the actors, and it’s going to take misdirection [to make the effects appear believable],” Sulka said. “I’ve chatted with a magician from Boston who’s given me some of the technical terms, and the coolest thing about it is, this is the scene that has given me the biggest ‘this is harder than I thought it would be’ feeling.”
Another callback to the original material is one of the most utilized set elements: the moving stairs. In the original Harry Potter series, the magically moving stairs of Hogwarts are a background detail used to get characters from one place to another. However, in this play, the stairs are one of the most deployed contraptions, making up some part of every major scene in the play. Due to the desire for synchronicity and the mastery of several configurations, up to four students are required to move each staircase, with rehearsals entirely set aside for practicing the use of the moving stairs.
As described by Sulka, the job of tech members is to build the set, the lights, the choreography and the magic. As a result, contrary to the usual scheme of a stage production, the technical team has the most rehearsal time due to the technical complexity of the play, rehearsing up to six days per week and multiple hours per day. With the play opening two weeks earlier than a usual WATA fall production, the schedule is extra crammed.
“One of the major things we had to tackle is how much time we have. We started in mid-September on the tech part of the show, so having six or seven weeks to tackle everything in this show is less time than we usually allot ourselves,” junior and co-technical director Hayden Pelta said. “[We have] just been figuring out how we can be most efficient during our rehearsals to make sure we can get done by the time we have to open.”
Other jobs of the technical team include managing sound effects, which includes the sound of a train moving in the distance and the timing of a magic spell to an actor’s swish of their prop wand. The technical team also builds and keeps track of the props used throughout the play, including wands, one of which almost every actor has. Some wands have the ability to light up and others are made to look like the wands of the characters used in the Harry Potter movies.
All this being said, the technical team is not responsible for the entire performance. There is plenty of behind the scenes work that goes into an actor’s performance, especially in this play’s case where the actors interact with a lot of the technical elements.
Another interesting aspect of the production is Lee’s role as Scorpius and Holway’s role as Albus, as they are both underclassmen in leading roles in the play.
According to Sulka, one of the main reasons that made these two suitable for their respective roles, other than their younger appearances which are accurate to the ages of the characters, was their on and off stage chemistry, a trait that translated well into their characters. Sulka would often see the two in the hallway goofing around, making up dances or handshakes, which is something she worked with them to try and capture with their characters in the play.
“It’s kind of similar to, ‘what came first, the chicken or the egg?’ Is that coming from the work that they’re doing with the script, or is that just from their being?” Sulka said. “They’re very supportive of one another, because this is such a scary thing, and there’s so much attention on the two of them, and they’re almost in every single scene, but they work really, really well together and are supporting each other a lot.”
With tickets already on sale, WATA members are eager to put on this novel production. Technical students and actors alike are bracing themselves for the opening night, determined to make an impact as one of the very few schools to get to perform this play.
“It’s an honor to be able to do this,” Lee said. “I love the show, and it’s really cool that we get to do it here and [that] we are one of the chosen few.”
