'Annie Get Your Gun' opens at East Hampton High School

About 90 students and six teachers have been preparing since January for Friday night’s opening of “Annie Get Your Gun” at East Hampton High School. Adapted from the 1946 Broadway musical, the school production is in the capable hands of veteran director Serena Seacat.

The Irving Berlin musical, with book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields, focuses on the fictionalized love story of Ohio-born sharpshooter Annie Oakley, played in East Hampton by senior Reilly Breen, and her husband, the show business savvy Frank Butler, played by senior Dylan Greene. The story is set in the late 19th century. The couple meet when Annie joins the cast of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West traveling show. The musical is famous for such showstopper numbers as “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” among others.

At a rehearsal last Wednesday, February 25, Ms. Seacat was seen bustling about the stage, crying out to groups of milling students, “Do we have a czar of Russia and a king of Italy?” before being surrounded by four frocked girls who had just tried on their costumes for the first time. One was worried because her lace petticoat was too short, hidden under her red gingham skirt. Ms. Seacat was simultaneously trying to watch three other students, choreographers Maddie Virga, Marith McMahon and Lauren Fitzgerald, as they rehearsed a new dance, sliding into horizontal splits on stage and crying “Ooh la la!”

When she finally had a moment to sit down, Ms. Seacat, who has been directing plays in East Hampton high school and middle school for the last eight years, explained her attraction to “Annie Get Your Gun.”

“I’m a good old Midwestern girl from Kansas, I still have straw in my hair and I love the boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again narrative,” Ms. Seacat said. “But it’s the Irving Berlin songs and the nostalgia of the era that draw you into the play.”

The production includes 50 student actors, 15 in stage crew, or “techies,” and 20 students plus six professional players in the orchestra pit under orchestra director Troy Grindle. Two more students do makeup and hair.

Auditions were the week after Thanksgiving. “Serena has this amazing gift of casting,” Assistant Director Deborah Mansir said. “She gets the right people in the right parts. I’m in awe of her ability to do that.” Ms. Mansir and Ms. Seacat have directed the last 10 high school plays together.

Between working different scenes at the rehearsal last week, Ms. Breen said that she relates to her character, Annie Oakley.

“She’s kind of misunderstood,” Ms. Breen said. “People think she’s this backwoods, naïve character, but she’s a little more savvy than people give her credit for. She’s really fun to play.”

Ms. Breen said she has been in every school play since ninth grade, as has the other lead player, Mr. Greene. “Even if I didn’t get a big part, I just love being a part of it, on stage,” she said. But in this play, she said, she’s on stage a lot more than she ever has been before, which she has found great fun. “I don’t think of it as hard work,” she said, despite the long hours and daily rehearsals.

Ms. Breen said she’d like to be a screenwriter, one reason she enjoys acting now. But she originally started acting because she loves to sing.

Her co-star, Mr. Greene, said he also loves to sing, and that he is happy to be playing a real man this time out.

“In the last play, ‘Big,’ I was a 13-year-old boy in a man’s body, and, before that, I played a lion, so I actually get to be a real man for a change and it feels good.”

He said one of the challenges of this production is the size of the cast. “It requires a lot more attention as there are more people on stage, and if one person is wrong, it messes up everyone,” Mr. Greene said.

Senior Erika Darenberg, who plays Winnie Tate, the secondary female role, said, “My part is kind of like me in real life. I’m 17 and I have a boyfriend. The only thing different is having an accent because I’m not western.”

Another senior, Brian Niggles, who has been involved in East Hampton theater with Ms. Seacat since the fifth grade, plays Buffalo Bill and also designed the set, lights and sound effects.

“Brian is exceptionally talented,” Ms. Seacat said. “He has a natural feel for the ‘look’ as well as being a fabulous actor. He can play any role. I don’t know what I’m going to do next year without him.”

In designing the play’s 10 different sets, Mr. Niggles said he went rummaging at yard sales for stage dressing and found old suitcases, an old chair, bottles and urns. He borrowed antiques from his family and Ms. Seacat and wooden barrels from a local store.

“I always try to keep it interesting—eye candy,” he said. “Things people don’t usually see at this level. The scenes are nostalgic America, something that everyone is interested in,” he said. “It’s fun to play up the whole cowboys and Indians thing.”

For lighting, Mr. Niggles said this year there was a little extra money in the budget, so he bought some additional lighting equipment, including colored and patterned lights that create special effects, such as the look of light shining through trees, leaving shadows of leaves across a building. Mr. Niggles said he was deeply indebted to art teacher Teresa Lawler and tech teacher Andy Rigby for helping to build the sets with their classes.

The time period of the play and the size of the cast make costumes quite a challenge, Ms. Mansir said. Despite the school’s costume collection and the extensive collection Ms. Seacat has filling her home, they had to rent 70 more from The Costumer in Schenectady. “It’s such a period piece, and you go from hillbilly to the ballroom,” Ms. Mansir said.

Both directors have been sewing around the clock, to make costume alterations and a 9-foot-by-18-foot tent, which will be raised during the play for the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show.

Stage manager Jeanette Traslavina, a junior, has the job of coordinating the set changes and assuring that actors have their props. During crunch week, after the cast goes home around 10 p.m., the stage crew stays behind and runs through the sets to make sure everyone knows how to get through them efficiently, Ms. Traslavina said. “The changing of the sets is like fine-tuned choreography,” Ms. Seacat said. “It’s like a giant puzzle.”

“Annie Get Your Gun” will be performed at the high school at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 6, and Saturday, March 7, and at 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 8. Tickets are $10 each, or $5 for students under 12 and seniors over 60. For more information, call 631-329-4111.