Westerville South’s Theatre department produced its first Movie Musical, Ranked, on Sept. 25.  

Ranked is about a high school set in a dystopian future where your class rank determines everything. The students are set on trying to be at the top no matter what that takes. When a new freshman comes in and creates chaos among the students, it makes them wonder what is really important in their lives.

Because of  the pandemic, the theatre department turned their musical into a filmed production. “Troupe 513 is a family full of people dedicated to making theatre,” Senior, Georgia Santino said. 

The troupe did not give up when it came to making a musical. “We are still willing to do what we love, while following precautions,” Eric Kim, sophomore, said.

Cast members were asked to film videos of them performing choreography in their homes; then, they went to the recording studio downtown, The Fort,  to record songs. They filmed scenes on location at Everal Barn and other parks, which was all done while maintaining a social distance or while wearing masks so everything stayed safe. Junior, Tyler Zwick said, Because of COVID, we had a lot of limitations surrounding how we could make theatre and this was our safest solution.”

Director, Matt Wolfe, and assistant director, Kyra Lesmerises, junior, both agree that the most difficult part of working in this set-up was not being able to “massage the story”, which means to really work on character development and story progression. 

Usually rehearsals start with read-throughs and weeks of character work; however, with this show, scenes were not filmed in chronological order and it was harder for actors and directors to get the bigger picture of the story while filming. 

Santino, played Alexis Larsen in the show. Alexis is Lily’s older sister who is determined to stay at the top and keep her rank. “Getting ready a good 100 times in costume makeup and hair rather than just for tech week and performances was pretty difficult,” Santino said,

Despite the challenges presented, what keeps theatre troupe members coming back is the friendships they form throughout doing shows and performances. 

Matt, played by Zwick, a normal student just like everyone else who is striving to keep his rank. He said  the most difficult part of the show, “was definitely being apart from my cast mates most of the time.”

Although putting together a musical in this very different way did have difficulties, many new and fun experiences came from it. Wolfe believes the most fun aspect of this show was, “Doing something new!”

Assistant director, Kyra Lesmerises, explains that for her the most fun parts were the filming days, “Every filming day we had was beautiful weather, and we all just got to be outside at Everal Barn with our friends creating theatre. We all had a ton of fun on those days,”she said.

Zwick and Santino both said that the most fun part was going to a recording studio and recording all the songs they had to sing,  “We all had a blast with our music director Tyler Domer and sound professional Jason Price. You felt like a celebrity putting on those headphones and getting behind the mic,”said Santino.

All in all, what the cast and crew hopes viewers got most from watching the show is that nothing can stop a group of people from creating art and doing what they love. More specifically, they hope people really listened to the message of the musical and truly understand that grades do not define a student and their character. 

“As cliche as it sounds, I’m really proud of our troupe for making theatre during a pandemic. It was hard, but we had fun and now we can say that we made a movie,” said Zwick.

 Tech crew member, Eric Kim. sophomore, said if he could sum up the whole experience into three words it would be, “Into the unknown.” Kim went on to explain, “With the pandemic going around, we didn’t know what to expect. We made plans, but we didn’t know if we could go through with them. It was a new experience for everyone and no one was sure of anything,”

Troupe 513’s next projects will be a series of 4 small cast productions featuring 2 plays:  The Wolves and The Laramie Project, a musical: Songs for a New World, and one devised theatre project.