Getting to know the swing cast

Members of the swing cast sit in a tight circle and read their lines in the wings of the Blackford amphitheater during rehearsal. The sound of rustling scripts and impassioned monologues is punctuated only by bursts of laughter and applause as the cast members encourage each other and prepare for their performance. While the main cast of this year’s fall play “The Laramie Project” prepared for their shows, the swing cast was busy rehearsing the show, learning from their mentors in the main cast and improving their acting.

Each member of the swing cast is an understudy for the upperclassman who is playing their roles. Since members of both casts auditioned separately and play several characters, one swing may have several upperclassman mentors. While the two casts rehearsed separately, the swings watched their mentors, used the same props and blocking as the main cast and received advice from them throughout rehearsals.

Jeffrey Draper, the director of the play, spoke about what the swing cast would learn from rehearsing and watching the main cast perform.

“The [swing cast is] seeing things that they want to do after watching the main cast and seeing ways that they could do things differently, things that they’d want to do to make it their own,” Draper said. “It’s very possible that they’re going to give really unique performances.”

To give the swing cast more attention, Draper asked Cooper Sivara (‘07), who participated in Harker’s last production of “The Laramie Project” nine years ago, to direct the swing cast.

“It’s a lot of work just being in a play in general, but especially this play, it deals with a lot of really deep themes,” Sivara said. “All the swings have been great at committing to their characters, learning their lines, and overall, putting a lot of work into everything.”

During rehearsals, each swing received advice from their over-studies in the main cast. Members of the cast expressed their thoughts on having a mentor to learn from and look up to.

“We’ve gotten to learn a lot from what they have taught us from their experiences when they were younger,” said Haley Keller (10), who plays Ms. Thompson, Father Roger Schmit and Barbara Pitts and is an understudy for Amrita Singh (11) and Kaushik Sankar (12). “We can learn about new traits or new characteristics from a character that we wouldn’t have thought of ourselves.”

On Wednesday, the swing cast rehearsed in the quad at the Blackford campus under the direction of Mr. Sivara. They rehearsed their lines and discussed how to improve their performance

“You need to put a lot of emotion because it’s obviously about a really bad thing that happened, and it’s a true story so it’s hard to portray these real people,” said Meghna Phalke (9), who plays Kristin Price, Alison Mears and Jon Peacock and is an understudy for Naomi Molin (12), Kaushik Sankar (12) and Helen Woodruff (12).

The members of the swing cast see performing the play as a great opportunity, and many of them hope to be part of the main cast in years to come.

“We all love it a lot and we think it’s a really great opportunity for freshmen and sophomores to get a taste of what it’s like to be in the actual fall play,” said Haris Hosseini (9), who plays Aaron McKinney, Harry Woods, Andy Paris and Jonas Slonaker and is an understudy for Michael Jin (11) and Emre Ezer (11).

The swing cast will perform today at 2 p.m.