After a whirlwind of rehearsing, the Starlight Theatre Company’s senior-directed children’s shows toured and performed at local elementary schools, to the delight of the actors and little kids alike. But Bowie’s thespians don’t have time for a breather—rehearsals for this year’s musical, Tarzan, are already in full swing.

The children’s shows ran at Bowie from Thursday, November 12 to Sunday, November 15. The following week, the directors and their casts toured in groups to several different elementary schools to perform their plays for the students there.

“The students seem to enjoy performing their shows for the elementary schools more than they do here,” theatre teacher and director Betsy Cornwell said. “It’s a very different experience because little kids react differently to the performances compared to high schoolers. They laugh at different things, they don’t pick up on other things. It’s a different dynamic between the performers and the audience.”

Though the plays were performed for Bowie audiences, the real target audience was the children. The actors played exaggerated, larger-than-life characters, but they made sure that they were characters the kids could still connect with and relate to.

“It was really rewarding to see the kids so happy after our performances,” sophomore Tasha Anslyn said. “They wanted to meet us backstage, so we had to stay in-character, which was pretty fun.”

Many of the shows were adaptations of familiar stories like Charlotte’s Web or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well as fables and folktales. Not only were they fun, entertaining shows that made the kids laugh, they also all had morals behind them.

“The shows taught lots of good lessons,” sophomore Anna Seningen said. “The show I was in taught about loving your friends and loving yourself and that you never have to change for anyone else to like you.”

There were twelve plays in all, each of them directed by a senior member of the STC. The senior directors for this year were chosen at the end of last year after a rigorous selection process.

“It was a long process,” senior director Chloe Arevalo said. “There were twenty people who tried to be senior directors but only twelve made it, so that was really scary.”

The children’s shows are the first of two sets of shows that will be directed by the twelve seniors. The second round in the spring gives them a chance to direct more serious one-act plays, but the children’s shows are the only ones that tour, making it a unique experience.

“I was really freaked out during tours, but it all worked out in the end,” Arevalo said. “Even though it was stressful, everyone was working together as a family and we made it.”

Despite the stress that goes into both becoming a senior director and being one, it’s a rewarding position that gives the students lots of opportunities they wouldn’t get otherwise.

“It’s just really fun to direct people because you’re working together to create something really cool, and also it’s really rewarding to see children’s reactions to something you’ve created,” Arevalo said.

But after the children’s shows were over, the members of the Starlight Theatre Company jumped straight into rehearsals for their next big project—their biggest project of the year, in fact—Tarzan.

“The musical is always a big undertaking,” Cornwell said. “It’s the only time in the school year that so many people and different departments come together to create a single show.”

The musical requires collaboration from many of the fine arts departments, and it gives students who are both musically and theatrically talented a chance to shine and show off their hard work in a way they usually wouldn’t be able to in straight plays or choir concerts.

“I honestly never would have expected to be a lead, especially since I’m just a sophomore and I was up against so many talented people,” sophomore Michael Jefferson, one of the actors playing Tarzan’s best friend Terk said. “It’s amazing.”

With rigorous rehearsals that include learning music, dance numbers, and coordinating complicated chorus scenes, the musical is really unlike any other show Bowie puts on during the year.

“It started out a little intimidating because of all the upperclassmen trying out and I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it, but then it started to get really fun because you get really close with your friends,” freshman and Tarzan chorus member Kaedon Solana said.

Tarzan will offer lots of challenges and new experiences not only to students being in the musical for the first time, some of them a bit more surprising than others. But the stress always seems to be worth it.

“I’m nervous about performing only in a loincloth and I’m a  little nervous about having to swing on the vine,” said junior and one of the actors playing Tarzan Jackson Walker. “But I’m also really excited about just being able to prove that I can do this.”