A black suit and bright blue tie meant two things to Curtis Faulkner, months of work paying off and show time.
Faulkner, along with two other senior directors, Travis Deprado and Colby Rumph, put together what one person called, the best cabaret show they’d ever seen.
“I heard raving reviews and lots of people congratulated us, even people who had graduated and came back to see cabaret,” Faulkner said.
Faulkner acted as the artistic director for the production and was responsible for the show’s theme and blocking of the songs.
“The hardest challenge we had to face and overcome was the morale and investment in the show, not by us, but by the performers,” Faulkner said. “We had to somehow instill that spark in them of wanting to do all of this on their own free time.”
The performance took not only the triplet of directors, but dozens of performers who dedicated their time day and night for three weeks leading up to the show.
“I worked more than ten hours on the show, including rehearsals and performances, and I feel like I improved after every show,” Starlight Theatre Company technician Eddie Garnert said. “Afterwards I thought, oh, I didn’t screw up this time.”
Additionally, musicians, the two choir teachers, Ben May and Caitlin Obert-Thorn, and a crew of technicians helped set the show in motion.
“The three student directors wrote the story and came up with the entire show on their own,” Obert-Thorn said. “And cabaret made more money this year than it ever has before.”
Construction for cabaret started long before school was even in session. Faulkner had been individually preparing for the show since his sophomore year.
“We did a lot of preparation before hand, all the choreographers and directors got together during summer, we had the directors selected long before last year, and had the song list selected as well,” Faulkner said. “There was a lot of prerequisite work to make those three weeks go as smooth as possible.”
Performer and assistant director, Dj Fortner, took on the role as the male character, Blue. Cabaret had a plotline that involved three characters, which were all executed by a series of performers, dressed similarly for that character. Fortner also had a solo, “Singing in the Rain.”
“I don’t get nervous for performances where I’m playing a character, I only get nervous for say presentations where I’m being myself,” Fortner said. “I was just so excited that it was happening since I had a big part in the show, and it was something I had been working on for awhile.”
Whether Faulkner is performing on stage for theatre or backstage directing for choir, he has put his mark on more than one school program. He got his start in middle school when he was casted as Gaston in Bailey middle school’s rendition of Beauty and the Beast, and it’s been going since then. Just last year at Austin’s first Greater Austin High School Musical Theatre Awards, or GAHSMTA, Faulkner received a scholarship for his performance in the Starlight Theatre Company’s production of Miss Saigon.
“I got a scholarship to attend the Texas Musical Theatre Workshop over the summer at UT for three weeks, I stayed in a student dorm, went to workshops with people from Broadway or from other colleges, took master classes with people who flew in from Canada, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, and Panama,” Faulkner said. “It was so prestigious even though it’s only in its’ younger years, Idina Menzel came last year and Laura Osnes came this year, she said she liked my singing.”
As Faulkner settles into his final year of high school, he reflects on one of the many performances he was and will be a part of in the upcoming months.
“It feels like I’m vacuuming a dirty rug and I look back, and it’s clean. Even if you miss a few spots, you see the big picture and forget the tiny flaws, there’s always going to be mistakes,” Faulkner said. “Yet we challenged soloists, we gave people redemption for past mistakes, we gave them a chance to grow as artists, and we pushed them at every rehearsal to limits they didn’t think they could go.”
As the year progresses, only time will tell what the future holds for Faulkner and how far he will go to make his dreams come true.
“It’s always a work in progress, you can never reach perfection, but you can always try your best,” Faulkner said. “I’m very happy with how Cabaret turned out and how my life is turning out. Onwards and upwards.”