A Play of Their Own

“Mr. Rigg, is there anyway you can be in here? This is moving way too fast,” junior Amy Cheever shouts from the dark control room at the school’s theater, where she’s controlling stage lights during a rehearsal of Les Misérables: Student Edition.

Just “have fun; play with it,” director Rob Rigg responds. “Design stuff!”

The 47-member cast stands by as stagehands break apart, then reconfigure wooden sets (more than 10 feet tall), designed to look like shoddily constructed, giant ladders. The recycled structures are covered in their umpteenth layer of paint—the final layer of which students themselves brushed onto the frames that they, too, built themselves.

When the school first opened in 2007, the parents of theater students would stay up until 3 a.m. to put together elaborate props that the students are now constructing on their own. There wasn’t a class of seniors to impart four years of knowledge onto stage crew novices, as Cheevers will be able to do next year.

It may not be the most elaborate set to fly onto the stage—students recall intricate props, like the multilevel house for Bell in Disney's Beauty and the Beast and hand-painted wallpaper on the set of Neil Simon's Fools—but they're able to take pride in a production that's wholly theirs.

“Now, it’s more of our own show,” said senior Elizabeth Drake. "It feels good."

She’s a soon-to-be graduate who hasn’t yet selected which university she'll attend next year but confidently said she’ll major in political science with a minor in theater and an emphasis in stage management.

Les Misérables "is completely different" from the other plays produced in the past four years at San Juan Hills, students said. It has required a higher level of commitment from the roughly 100 students involved, including a 24-member orchestra.

"The play is really in depth," said Drake. "It makes you think about real life ... it's about living a miserable life and learning to get through it."

As intricate as prior sets staged at San Juan Hills, the plot of Les Misérables is based on Victor Hugo's dramatic novel set during the political upheavals of 19th-century France.

In the opening scene, the main character, Jean Valjean (Evan Frolov) is imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving children. The petty thief is overseen there by Javert (Chaz Breithaupt) for 19 years. (Breithaupt's father, Stephen, acted in the West Coast premiere of Les Misérables.)

This first act was rehearsed Wednesday. Rigg sat below the control room at a card table where he vigorously scribbled notes, interjecting directions about lighting, and hustling stage crews that didn't move props quick enough.

But their lines were seemingly memorized, and choreography was down pat. There will be no ad-libbing in this production, students assured.

The pages of a large sketch pad in front of Rigg contained penciled drawings of backdrops, some still not completed. The students, he said, came up with a way to extend the height of some of the barricades from 12 to 24 feet.

Rigg said that when the students first entered the theater programs in their freshmen years, most of them had never even picked up a hammer. Now they grasp how to conceptualize and bring to life blueprints.

"It's amazing the skills they've developed," he said.

San Juan Hills High’s Collaborative Arts program will present Les Misérables: Student Edition at 7 p.m. April 21-23 and 28-30. Tickets are $15 for orchestra seats and $13 for balcony seats. All seating is reserved. Tickets may be purchased at sjhhs.org.