Courtesy of the LWHS Archives
In August of 1987, Reid Edelman, who had graduated from Lick-Wilmering in 1982, approached the LWHS administration with a proposal to start a stand-alone Performing Arts Program. Today, LWHS students engage in rich instrumental, vocal and theater programs within the Performing Art Deparment. But in 1987, the range and depth of Performing Arts classes at LWHS did not exist as it does today. Before 1987, Visual and Performing Arts were combined in a single Arts program with no distinct curriculum.
Courtesy of the LWHS Archives
A graduate of Stanford University in 1986 with a BA in drama and English, Edelman chaired the Performing Arts Department at LWHS from 1987 to 2000. During a sabbatical from LWHS in 1995, Edelman earned an Ed.M in arts in education from Harvard University.
Although he left LWHS over twenty years ago, Edelman’s influence on the department and the theater program is on-going.
During his time at Lick-Wilmerding, Edelman developed an award-winning theater program and taught acting, directing, voice and dramatic literature classes. Edelman is currently a drama professor at Mendocino College in Ukiah, California.
Edelman was succeeded by the inspiring Cliff Mayotte.
In 1988, under Edelman’s leadership, students initiated the school’s first student-run production. The first LWHS One Acts Festival, produced in the winter of 1988, sparked what has now become one of the most highly anticipated events in the annual school calendar.
The annual festival of One Acts is a production of five to six short plays written, directed and produced by the students at LWHS. “What made the creation of One Acts so unique was the fact that it gave students a platform to freely and creatively express themselves,” Miguel Zavala, LWHS’s current theater director, said.
Mayotte and Zavala carried on the tradition of teaching and preparing the student directors for the next season of One Acts.
Directing is a class that is taught during the Fall semester every other year. Juniors and seniors who have taken one of the acting classes or have participated in a Fall play or Spring musical are allowed to take the class.
“The student directors need to be incredibly dedicated,” Zavala said. “There’s a huge time commitment and a lot of work that needs to get done on the student’s part.”
The class itself covers basic stage directing material to orient students to look at the stage from a director’s point of view as opposed to an actor’s. Students learn how to visualize a script on stage, develop the dramatic structure of a scene as well as stage and block a scene.
For their final class presentation, each student is tasked with directing their peers in a scene selected from a play. The tools and skill set that each director develops are all incorporated when it comes time to select and cast One Acts.
Over the years, the One Acts have become a culmination of the scope of the student body’s imagination. Ranging from mysteries, dramas and musicals. Highlights from recent years include plays set in a pirate ship, the basement of a cult’s house and at a highschool party at Hogwarts.
“The One Acts reflects the world in its current state. The themes, ideas and concepts of the plays are never the same from year to year,” Zavala said.
One Acts, are an “opportunity to discover something you’re passionate about and have the chance to get out there and say something on stage,” Zavala said.
Beginning in 1960 and through at least 1967, a musical play was produced each year. In 1960, the first musical, with both script and sheet music written by Ed Rich, the head of school. In 1961, “Ring around the Rosie,” another musical also written by Rich by the Lick Glee Club, perhaps joined by the Glee Clubs of the Katherine Delmar Burke’s and Sarah Dix Hamlim Schools.
Courtesy of the LWHS Archives
A huge part of theater at LWHS is the collaboration between cast and crew that goes into every show. “There’s a deep feeling of mutual respect for each other’s work, it’s almost sacred.”
Courtesy of the LWHS Archives
Now, Lick-Wilmerding puts on a spring musical every other year. The 2022 production was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, a joint production of the Theater, Vocal, Dance and Stagecraft classes. Many student musicians and faculty played in production’s orcestra.
Beginning In 1990, a regular schedule of performing arts productions show up in the archives: two theater productions each year (with one of them, every-other-year, the spring musial), the One Act Festival, fall and spring concerts by the Orchestra, Jazz Ensembles, Choir, and Dance.
Zavala said. “When students audition for a show they’re revealing an incredible amount of vulnerability that is necessary for growth and progression in theater. And that is something that I think transcends every generation of theater at Lick.”
