Huntingtown’s High School’s award-winning, theatre program, Eye of the Storm Productions, opened their 2015/16 season with a stunning staging of “After Juliet.” The plays explores the lives of Romeo and Juliet’s friends soon after the fateful end of Shakepeare’s play. The play was inspired by Kiera Knightly and written for the Connections initiative by her father Shannon MacDonald. The play uses modern dialect interspersed with writing taken from old Elizabethan plays.
The play focuses on Rosaline, played by McKenna Johnson, whom Romeo dropped once he saw Juliet. Benvolio, Zach Hamby, and Valentine, Terrell Gross fight over whether the family feud should continue or instead let love prevail. Ghosts of all the broken-hearted come back to haunt the world and drive the two families to a final duel to decide the fate of their little world. Comic relief is provided by Lorenzo and Gianni, played by Hunter Mackey and Meade Morrison.
“This show has really challenged us,” says director Derek Anderson, “It has been exciting working with the students as they shared their artistic ideas for the show and stretched their creativity during the execution of their concepts.”
This production is a play with music with solos by Rachel Morales, Hannah McClelland, and Brianna Boyer. Fights are choreographed by professional fight coordinator Craig Lawrence and dance choreography by Parker King.
The scenery, skillfully design and developed by Jack DeGrange, depicts a world falling apart and drives home the theme of the play with multiple rain effects. “The engineering that went into the rain effects is quite something. To be present to watch Walter (Merz) and Jack design, test, and tweak the water system was exciting,” stated Anderson. Meade Morrison’s and Taylor Luskey’s lighting design is inspired and compelling. Each costume is skillfully crafted by award-winning student designer Meredith Prouty-Due.
Huntingtown High School continually ranks as one of the top theatre companies in Maryland and has won awards on the national level.