WHAT IS GUNN THEATRE?
The Gunn Theatre Department program consists of both classroom and extracurricular opportunities. The Theatre Director, Kristen Lo, teaches Theatre 1, Theatre 2, and Theatre 3-4. Every other year she co-teaches Theatre in Performance and Shakespeare in Performance with English teacher Paul Dunlap. Stage Tech and Advanced Stage Tech are taught by Jen Ellington and Chris Mahle.
The department puts on two large productions each year, one in the fall and one in the spring. The spring production alternates each year between Shakespeare and a Musical. In addition, the theatre department produces student-directed Gunn Spring Festival in May, Play-in-a-Day, as well as other theatre class and Thespian Club performances.
Classroom Highlights
Each semester, students enrolled in a Gunn Theatre class attend one off-campus, professional production of a play during the school day.
Classes often include instructional units presented by professional guest artists. Examples include dialect training, stage combat work and acting technique seminars.
All classes have public performances for friends and family as part of the curriculum.
Theatre 3-4 students participate in TheatreWorks’ Young Playwright’s Project every other year. A number of Gunn students have gone on to pursue acting and playwriting in college as a result of this unique experience.
Extracurricular Highlights
Participation in Gunn productions is open to all Gunn students (except for Spring Festival, which is only open to students in Gunn Theatre classes). Additional opportunities for students who cannot commit to a full stage production are described below.
Play in a Day
Gunn Theatre alumni and current students come together to rehearse and perform ten-minute plays in one 24 hour period. Authors write their play overnight, and the following day everyone rehearses until showtime at 7:30 that evening. The results are always astonishing and often miraculous!
Spring Festival
Our final major department production in the year, the Student-Directed Spring Festival, provides many opportunities for newcomers to the Theatre department. Spring Festival are typically consists of a few short plays selected, cast, directed, and sometimes even written by Gunn Theatre students. Any Gunn Theatre student is eligible to audition.
Theatre Trip
Each year theatre students travel to either Ashland, Oregon, New York City, San Francisco, or Los Angeles to see current theater productions. This trip typically occurs over a Thursday-Sunday weekend in April. For many students, it is a highlight of their high school experience!
Thespian Club
The student-elected, student-run Gunn Thespian Board plans and leads weekly Gunn Thespian Club meetings, which are open to all Gunn students. They have the opportunity each September to participate in a local Thespian Leadership Conference, and they support Gunn theatre activities and events in innumerable ways throughout the year.
Senior Showcase
On a Friday in mid-late May the Gunn theatre community comes together to celebrate our graduating seniors at Senior Showcase. In this wonderful tradition, seniors perform pieces of their own choosing, and receive a warm and heartfelt send off from the entire department in recognition of their dedication to the program.