The importance behind Springfest
This past Friday, March 17, Hobart High School held it’s 6th annual Springfest for the enjoyment of the entire Hobart community.
Springfest is a wonderful opportunity at HHS for students of all grade levels to become involved in helping their community. The festival is almost entirely ran by student volunteers, sponsored by the clubs and groups they partake in. Cake walks, silent auctions, games, face painting, and a bounce house section are some of the many activities open to the public, all ran by HHS student volunteers.
The profits received from Spring Fest go to support the Building Brickies program, formerly known as the Parents as Teachers program. Building Bricks works to help develop social opportunities for young and pre-K students, as well as preparing these young children to be in a kindergarten classroom setting. Kindergarten is not required by the state of Indiana, which is why programs like Building Brickies hold great importance to the community. By the age of 6, it is possible that students entering the first grade had no prior social and academic experience, which is what Building Bricks works to develop.
Children enrolled in Building Brickies score higher on kindergarten readiness tests and in reading, math, and language in Grades 1-4. 65 children are currently a part of the Building Brickies program; however, there is a waiting list of 113 families planning to join the cause.
Superintendent, Dr. Buffington shared “SpringFest is an amazing community event totally sponsored by volunteers who are mainly high school students in order to fund early education programs in Hobart. It is exciting to see high school students running the event. It is such a wonderful, inexpensive way to spend family time and have fun from magic shows to games to bounce houses, we have it all. This year we debut the Brickie Burger in the food court. I am proud of the efforts of all involved, especially our students.”
Among all the fun events that were available at the Springfest, the pie face booth and bounce houses gained a lot of talk and attention. Smashing pies in people’s faces and bouncing, all for a good cause; sounds like a fun way to give back to community!
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Hobart Theatre Department decided to take a challenge for the summer play and do a Shakespearean Comedy, entitled A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play opened Thursday, March 9 and followed through the weekend.
Shakespeare’s contexts contain old english which is often challenging to thespians who have never come to know a Shakespeare play. However, the stars of HHS’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream production did an incredible job at memorizing their difficult lines while beautifully portraying the emotion and character through them.
Madison Comacho, who played the lead of Titania stated “The most exciting part about Midsummer and playing Titania is challenging my comfort zone. I've never had a role, especially one that hasn't reflected who I am as a person,”.
She added “she is so confident and independent. She is someone that I want to be. I've never been challenged, and I feel that through Titania and having the opportunity to perform Shakespeare I will not only grow confidence as an actor but as a person as well.“
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was done once in Hobart Theatre history, and was executed beautifully. With this said, the stakes were high for all cast and crew, within recreating stage The original time HHS theatre took on this show, realistic trees, waterfalls, and ponds were incorporated, and turned the stage into a romantic, fairy-like wonderland.
Set designers, Nicole Zabrecky and Lexi Fouch did an outstanding job at creating the set this time around. In fact, the set they created has been said to be one of the most crafty and memorable in HHS Theatre history. Using various recyclable items, like egg cartons to create flowers and plastic to create butterflies, the stage appeared to be the beautiful fantasy setting everyone had hoped for. A pond was even included, with extremely tall hand painted 3D tree structures lying behind it. Black light paint was a special feature of this show, which caught attention when the light changes occurred.
Beside the set, costume designer Kathleen Belk and costume girls Caitie Ramirez and Skyler Sherwood executed a number of incredible fairy, steampunk and classical lover costumes. Alongside the costumes, these costume girls along with Melissa Stalbaum and Becky Lozano put together advanced special FX makeup to truly capture the audience’s attention to the fairies. Jewels, big hair, bright colors and glitter all played a role in capturing the magic behind the show.
In regards to being involved in Shakespeare, Comacho stated “I did enjoy Shakespeare quite a lot. Memorization was a pain and developing a character was harder than it usually is, but it was worth it. The reaction from the student body and community as a whole was quite greater than what any of us believed it would be. It was a fun show to have the opportunity to work on.”