From the screen to the stage

Students at West De Pere High School have been hard at work preparing for the opening of their production of The Addams Family, bringing the ghoulish family many have come to know and love from the screen to the stage.

“We see Wednesday has grown up and met a man that she wants to get married to, but then a conflict starts when she asks her dad to keep that a secret from her mother until after they have a dinner together,” said Maggie White, director of the show. “And then it’s revealed during the dinner and Wednesday has to try and backtrack and figure stuff out. And the family that Wednesday would be marrying into is very different from the Addams. They’re very straight-laced. They’re very sunshiny. They’re very anti-Addams. So there’s a big clash between the gothic Addams family and then this family that loves the color yellow and loves that straight-laced structure.”

The show, White said, will certainly have audiences laughing, even those who are unfamiliar with the original Addams Family show.

“It’s a very funny show,” she said. “It has a bunch of jokes that if you’re an Addams fan or not, you’ll like… Comedy really drives this script, so it’s kind of necessary that [the students] need to adapt to be really good at that. There’s a ton of really funny one-liners that our cast delivers really well and there’s a ton of physical comedy.”

“In every story, there’s an underlying moral to it that I hope sticks with them, but also just how fun the show is,” said Lee Demarce, a senior who plays Uncle Fester in West De Pere’s show. “It definitely brings out a lot of the quirkiness that the original Addams Family show and movies had. There’s moments where I’m backstage and I’m laughing because of just how hilarious the scenes can be sometimes.”

With just a week left until opening night, MAGGIE said she and her students are in one of the more challenging phases of putting together a musical production.

“Right now, we’re just coming up with all the pieces coming together,” White said. “Individually, the stage crew has worked on building the set and programming the lights and programming the sound. And the cast has worked on dancing and singing and acting. And now, when we get to the point where we weave everything together and then also throw on costumes and props and having an audience and hair and makeup, that’s usually the most challenging part.”

And that challenge is enhanced by the high number of students involved in the show.

“We have such a big ensemble and it’s very heavy with background characters, but our background characters are just as important to the plot as everything else,” Demarce said. “Trying to make it look so smooth and fluid with so many people has definitely been a challenge.”

It’s a challenge Demarce and the cast feel prepared to take on, though, knowing the rewarding feeling awaits them when everything finally comes together.

“Theater is something that you have to work with other people,” he said. “You have to figure out what works and what doesn’t. You have to go through trial and error and it’s just something that you have to keep going with. You can’t just give up on your first try. You’ve got to keep going until you finally get it right and that moment when you’re presenting the show on stage in front of everyone, it’s a moment of pride. You’re just so proud of not only yourself, but everyone else in the show.”

Performances of The Addams Family will take place Feb. 20, 21 and 27 at 7 p.m. with an additional performance on March 1 at 2 p.m.

Tickets and more information are available at ticketleap.events/tickets/wdptheatre/addams.