Atherton’s “The Great Gatsby” is coming to our theatre soon!
“The Great Gatsby” is a play with some musical elements, adapted from the original book by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story follows Nick as he meets the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and discovers his obsessive quest to win back his former love, Daisy Buchanan. The story is set against the backdrop of the Roaring Twenties, having themes of the destructive nature of love, class corruption, and the illusions of the past and the American Dream.
To Shelby Steege, Atherton’s theatre teacher and the director of “The Great Gatsby”, the play is about longing for connection.
“It’s about a bunch of people who are searching back into the past or trying to find happiness from others,” Steege said.
The theatre department began preparing the play the 2nd week of school, adapting the book into a script.
“Obviously with any adaptation we have to make some adjustments, but we’ve tried to use as much dialogue form the actual book as possible and keep the sequence of events for the most part accurate to the storyline,” Steege said.
Now, tech week has started and the play has come to life on the stage. The technical sides of set, lighting, sound, props, and costumes, are all coming together with the actors and directors. Steege is proud of the creativity that their team has achieved.
“I feel like we tried to be as accurate as possible time-period wise with things like costumes and props. Also as inventive as possible with scenery since there’re so many different locations for this production,” Steege said.
With the performance dates coming up, Steege is most excited about the opportunity to showcase the students’ hard work.
“I am most excited about how excited the cast and crew has been to put this production together. I’ve really enjoyed seeing people step up to write the script or make sure projects get done. That has always been exciting to me; the ownership that the students have over the production,” Steege said.
If Steege were to tell the audience what to look most forward to, it would be the immersive audience setting.
“I think it’s a unique set-up to do a play like “The Great Gatsby ” in an intimate setting where we only have 100+ seats available and the audience is surrounding the performance. It might be different than any other version of Gatsby the audience has encountered,” Steege said.
Atherton’s “The Great Gatsby” is performing on Atherton’s stage on November 20, 21, and 22 and 7pm. The play can also be seen on November 23 at 2pm.
Tickets can be found at MySchoolBucks for $7, during lunch for $5, or at the stagedoor on performance night for $7 (see their poster above).
The Atherton Theatre hopes you enjoy their production of “The Great Gatsby”!
