We've Got The County Covered
We've Got The County Covered
The cast of the three plays performed on April 2-3 represent MAT's Youth Productions.
Playing the role of Cindy in Fighting Demons, Hailey Gandenberger discovers that being trapped is a choice. With her hands tied by personal guilt and shame, Cindy must choose to fight if she wants to be free of her demons.
One of the messages in the play Fighting Demons suggests that we shouldn't try to fight our demons alone, although we alone must conquer them. Here, Cindy (played by Hailey Gandenberger) is being comforted by Alice (Jordan Rader) who tries to calm Cindy, even though Alice is battling her own demon of bulimia.
The former Creative Leisure building served as the venue for three short plays which were presented on April 2 and 3 as part of the Montana Actors' Theater's (MAT) youth programs. Youth actress, Hailey Ganderberger debuted as the lead character, Cindy, in one of the plays: Fighting Demons by Angela Hill.
According to Hailey's mother, Kasie Gandenberger, opening night was a success, with all of the youth expressing "great emotion" and putting on "amazing performances."
In Fighting Demons, several teenagers find themselves trapped and fighting their own demons. Cindy is hiding a tragic secret, and each of the other teens is also struggling with immense hardship. In the end, they must choose to stay trapped or fight their way to freedom.
Because she is only a fifth grader and her mother wishes to protect her from prematurely learning about the tragedies that some teens face and endure, Hailey only knew that something "very bad" had happened to her character.
"Hailey honestly does not know what her character's demon is because I am not ready for her to know that people go through that. But even so, she has been able to bring emotion into her character. She did great with it," her mother reported.
About her new experience, Hailey claimed to have enjoyed her first time on stage and to have made some new friends. "This was a new experience. It was a great play," she said. Hailey considered the show's second night to be less stressful than the opening night's performance: "The second night was easier since I wasn't quite so nervous," she explained.
When asked whether she'd consider acting again, Hailey replied, "Most likely." She also decided that the aspect of the experience that stood out the most for her was "how emotional it got."
From the perspective of Angela Pratt, Youth Activities Director for MAT, the shows went very well. When she works with youth, Pratt's philosophy is to serve as a guide on the side and to direct from afar, allowing the students some creative license and to learn by doing.
"I let the students direct themselves with a little bit of coaching from me here and there. Whenever I let this happen, one or two students will always step up and take the lead. It is an awesome thing to watch. We have some great leadership in our youth. I only step in when I feel they need to push a little harder or when they seem to be out of ideas," Pratt stated.
Pratt believes that students working under this influence have a better grasp and appreciation for what it actually takes to make a show happen. "When they are the ones responsible for a show's successful outcome, a lot more work seems to get done," she reported.
The other two plays performed on April 2 and 3 were Submerged: A Tragedy in One Act by H. Stuart Cottman & Le Vergne Shaw and The Girl Who Was Asked to Turn Blue by Ev Miller. For these two plays, the cast roles swapped on the second night so that the boys played the girls in The Girl Who Was Asked to Turn Blue and the girls played the guys in Submerged.
