Jade Lenkersdorf

Debate team members (L-R) communications freshman Garret O’Donnell, communications senior Morgaan Jessell and communications junior Bethany Ebanks act out their skit in the showcase.

Meyer Hall is home to numerous performing arts events throughout the year. Theatre, dance, vocal and band majors are the students who often inhabit this building, but recently the communications majors took to the stage to put on the annual Communications Showcase, celebrating Dreyfoos’ 25^th anniversary.

This year’s theme was “Back to the Future,” and the show presented all areas that the communications department has to offer, including: debate, film, T.V. production, publications and creative writing.

“Basically the Communications Showcase is the one main show that the communications department has every year and everyone in the department gets involved,” communications junior Amanda Goodman said. “It’s just a great way to show off all of the work that everyone does here.”

The show took place on April 10, and featured performances and video presentations from many students from different areas; including a skit from the debate team covering the five best and worst things about high school, multiple films from students of varying grade levels and a performance and video from the Seeds Literary Magazine.

“We started preparing [the skit] three weeks in advance,” communications sophomore Peter Rawlik said.  “From the beginning of the year we knew about it and it was [the advertisement department’s] job to progressively film each section’s work throughout the year so that we had something to piece together for the showcase.”

The Marquee also provided a video presentation, but tragically the video was unable to finish playing at the showing due to technical difficulties.

“Everything went perfectly in rehearsals, it was really unexpected actually. It was really sad that we weren’t able to show it,” Rawlik said. Besides that one mishap though, everything else went according to plan, thanks to the show’s backstage crew.

“In the showcase I [was] backstage and I [was] in charge of [putting microphones on] the people performing,” Goodman said. “When we were running through the rehearsals I knew it was going to be good, but I think seeing the actual performance from the wings, it exceeded my expectations. We had a really great audience and it was received well.”

Communications teacher Kaleb Durocher also exhibited many of his student’s films at the showcase.

“I had to put together eight minutes of ninth and tenth grade films so it was pretty difficult to include a bunch of different projects,” Mr. Durocher said. “I wanted to strike a balance between quantity of students and also quality. I didn’t just put in the best quality because I wanted to represent a fair amount of students so I put in projects that a lot of people worked on. I tried to make the films a representation of the department.”

Many of the performing student’s parents were also at the event, and were thoroughly impressed with the hard work that these students put into the show.

“[The show] was fantastic,” communications parent, Heather Marshall said. “Very moving, and had so much in it. It was a great combination of all of the areas within the communications department, all of the kids [who performed] are so talented.”

Contributed by Karai Mclean