By Angelita Delcido
The Pueblo Theater family is treating the Pueblo HS Community with a “real life” view on situations that people experience everyday—a performance that acts out expectations for situations, and shows the reality of these situations. The show is called “Expectations vs. Reality”, and there will be four performances.
After all of the month-long challenges to remember their lines and character building, teacher and director Ms. Sarah Sutton is eager for her students’ performance to entertain and impact audiences emotionally, as well as to make them laugh.
“That’s [making an audience laugh and making an emotional impact is] an actor’s job,” Sutton explained. “We want to entertain—whether our acting makes the audience laugh, or cry.”
Sutton said the show will definitely entertain, but some audience members may consider the rating to be PG-13 because of some of the show’s themes—including conversations regarding relationships, teen pregnancy, alcoholism, suicide and death.
Sutton wants the community to know that although these “things” are prevalent, “it’s not the crux of the show. Sometimes we think that teens aren’t listening to adults, but everything that we adults say and do influences their every-day life.”
This show has been approved by school administrators.
She also explained students have invested a lot of after school time to rehearse this performance—an estimated 52 hours!
“This is also our first show with live music,” Sutton said. “Over the years, we’ve proven ourselves to the Pueblo Community, and we now have faculty asking to help with lights and sound.” She paused and said, “That’s how professional our program is now.”
The purpose of the show, Sutton said, is to entertain.
Senior Jalena Norzagaray said, “I want to leave a legacy for incoming theater students. I want to inspire the younger actors and actresses to commit to this program because it has helped me in so many different areas of my personal and academic life.”
She added that practices were sometimes grueling but enjoyed how after all of the hard work, everyone united as a huge family.
Sutton added, “I’ve had many of these students since they were freshmen, and to see them now as seniors and how they have grown into young adults is incredibly rewarding.”
[Writer’s footnote: I truly had the honor of watching this performance before the opening night, Thursday, Dec. 1. All of their hard work definitely shows in their performance! Warriors—come join the theatre family at 7 p.m. in the Little Theater, but you should be there a little earlier because these performances sell out quickly. The performance will be Thurs., Dec. 1 and Fri., Dec. 2; and Thurs., Dec. 8 and Fri., Dec. 9, all at 7 p.m.]