WSHS theatre season will open Saturday, Oct. 2 with the whimsical production of “Alice in Wonderland”.

Sophomore Rylee Jennings plays the title role of Alice. According to Jennings, “Alice in Wonderland is the story we all know and love!”

“It’s typically about a little girl who follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole and ends up in a strange new world. South’s production is a bit different though, Alice follows around a duplicate of herself while trying to figure out where exactly she is, but no one helps her. There’s a lot of fun characters that Alice interacts with, including your old favorites, and some new ones too!” Jennings said.

Unfortunately, the show was postponed from Saturday, Sep. 25 at noon and Sunday, Sep. 26 at noon and 3 p.m. to this Saturday at noon, and Sunday, Oct 3 at noon and 3 p.m., as the theatre director, Matt Wolfe, was contact-traced and needed to quarantine. 

If you plan on seeing the show, the theatre director Matt Wolfe, would appreciate it if everyone wore a mask, and kept at least two empty seats between you and anyone not with you. Tickets are $10 at the door.

Their favorite part about the show was being able to work with so many different people in each scene they’re in. They got to know everyone personally inside, and outside of character during rehearsals, according to Jennings.

Besides acting, Jennings enjoys showing up to the tech sessions and helping out where they can. “Both the cast and crew are so, so kind and everyone is so much fun to work with!” Jennings said. 

Senior Lilli Malone, who is one of the paint leads on the crew, said, once the crew is done building a set piece, she picks a color scheme, designs it how she wants it to look, and then walks the rest of the painting crew through her thought process. 

Malone enjoyed being able to give the crew creative freedom over sections of the set. “I would give them paint colors, and show them what I had designed, but the way they displayed it was completely up to them. I really enjoyed getting to see everyone on the paint crew have the chance to be creative and have as much fun painting as I did!” she explained.

For Jennings, the best part about the show was being able to work with people new to theatre and helping them learn more about theatre, while they were still learning themselves. 

Auditions took place in the auditorium on Aug. 25 at 6 p.m. Jennings said, “The audition process was new to me and it was a ton of fun. It was all led by the upperclassmen and each student led a different station. You got to choose your own groups at the beginning and then went along with each station and had fun with each different activity. We did puppet games, dancing, costumes, and even some character work! It was super relaxed and you even got to know some of the upperclassmen a bit better.”

Malone added, “I loved working on this show because of the childish colors and designs on the set. It was really cool to be able to just have fun with something like this, whether it was building trap doors and secret entrances, or painting butterflies and fun stuff like that!” 

For Malone, the most challenging thing while working on this show was time management. “When you get into the final stretch of finishing the set for a show, it’s hard because you’re working from around 2 p.m.-8 p.m. trying to make everything perfect for opening night.” 

But as always, Malone said it was worth it in the end with how the set came out.