A major renovation project will postpone Riverside’s fall play to January.
Construction began in Riverside’s theater and auditorium in October and will continue for several months. The renovations are funded by a $600,000 bond Riverside got in 2016, which increased to $1.2m after the pandemic.
Mr. William Holley, the tech theater teacher at Riverside, says that “The bond is to renovate and improve schools that are dated.”
Many schools in the area got bonds to help improve things that are too old or aren’t functioning correctly. Riverside’s bond was specifically made for audio, visual and lighting in the school’s theater.
“I can’t replace my stage, I can’t replace the seats, I can’t replace certain things,” said Holley. “I can only do audio, visual and lighting.”
The construction is going to include many phases, including in February when the theater will be shut down completely.
“All the power’s going to be cut to the building in our area,” said Holley.
Because of this, the fall play was delayed from October to January. Riverside’s theater department will be putting on Alice in Wonderland, with senior Nazanin Ghulami playing Alice.
With the stage and auditorium under construction this fall, students in theater classes spent most of the quarter learning about different aspects of theater instead of practicing for the play.
“We’re learning a whole bunch of new lighting stuff, so it’s kind of a positive that they’re bringing in all this new stuff so we can mess around with it while they’re building it.” Says Gates Butler, a senior in tech theater.
Some students didn’t even know that the play was being delayed.
“I would not have been aware of it had I not been told multiple times.” says senior Henry Lasseigne. “I didn’t know it was delayed.”
“For tech class at least, we’re kind of taking time to build up the program instead of the actual productions.”
“I don’t think there was anything related to the play in first quarter. We were pretty much just learning about lighting and sound stuff. I remember specifically Ms. Taylor was struggling to come up with an idea for which play to do.”
