Dear Mr. McIlmoyle,
I am writing not as a student, but as an actor here at Daniel Boone High School. I have been involved in four of the high school’s musicals including: The Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Once Upon a Mattress, and most recently Beauty and the Beast. I have gone through four directors in these past five years. I am writing this in order to help you better understand what the cast went through this year.
There is a unanimous feeling amongst the cast that Mrs. Erin Benn should be given full credit for the direction of this year’s production. Mrs. Reimels did not give the cast proper direction or character coaching, and if Mrs. Benn had not intervened, the musical would have been disastrous. Once Mrs. Benn began attending rehearsals regularly, she took it upon herself to resolve this issue.
Mrs. Benn was meant only to direct the choral section of the production. She went above and beyond the call of duty during the final month of production. Not only did she take the minimal chorus we were forsaken with this year and help them to sound full, but she also assisted the leads with their solo pieces. I was especially grateful for her assistance with my solo number “If I Can’t Love Her.”
There were several scenes in the show which involved extensive amounts of underscoring, or music played under the dialogue. Mrs. Reimels failed to recognize this, and we were forced to re-block the majority of our scenes. Incidents like these were very stressful for our orchestra conductor, Mr. Benn. He had been rehearsing the pit intensely and had high expectations of the cast. The frustration he had with the director became more apparent as we neared the show date. She constantly changed scenes around, which in turn tampered with the orchestra’s underscoring.
The most direction Mrs. Reimel’s gave to the chorus was the over used phrase, “You guys are standing in a straight line. You can not stand in a straight line.” Mrs. Reimels spent the majority of her time standing on the stage, where one can not truly see what is happening. This skewed her sense of the sound and also the view of the performance. This denied her the ability to grasp the overall feel of the show, clouding her judgment and rendering her useless in giving any direction.
The seniors thought it necessary to hold a cast meeting one night after rehearsal. Nick Reck and I began giving the cast the direction they needed to hear. They all listened intently, and we could tell that what we said had sunk in on some level. After that night the cast started to act more and things started to come together.
Miss Reimels, the assistant director, accomplished less than her mother. On several occasions during rehearsals she would sit in the back of the auditorium and socialize with cast members, as opposed to watching the performance and taking notes as she should have. On occasion she would take cast members aside to scold them for doing something incorrectly, only to find out her mother had told them to do it. She would occasionally change the blocking from her mother’s original design only to have the actors adjust them again to better suit our characters.
There were several incidents which occurred at the elementary school preview shows. During the first showing at Amity Intermediate and Amity Primary, Miss Reimels failed to bring my beast wig, an essential part of the costume. Instead of returning to the school for the wig, she made attempt to push the blame towards me. The fact of the matter was that Miss Reimels insisted on packing the costumes on her own and forgot the wig herself. At the second preview show she completely forgot Joel Kutz’s Lefou costume, which he handed to her personally the night before. Her initial excuse was that she left it in her car, only to find it was not there either. She then said that her mother must have taken it from her and put it in the costume closet. We then were told that she left it sit on a table in the student union and one of the wardrobe assistants placed it on the costume rack.
Miss Shutt, the choreographer, was new to the Daniel Boone musical experience. She came in not knowing what to expect, or who she would be working with. She was given the opportunity to select her featured dancers and teach those routines she had prepared ahead of time. There were several occasions in which Mrs. Reimels would reconstruct a scene, causing Miss Shutt to redesign the choreography. Again, she was another member of the musical staff sharing in the frustration of the incompetence of our direction.
I am not writing this in an attempt to get Mrs. and Miss Reimels fired. I am writing this to make you aware of how hard Mr. and Mrs. Benn, Miss Shutt, and the entire cast had to work in order to give you the best performance possible this past weekend. If it wasn’t for the hard work we all put into the production, my senior year musical would have been a memory rather forgotten.
Sincerely,
Christian N. Kriebel
The following students wished to have their names attached to this letter.
James F. Killgore
Nickolas Reck
