From Nov. 17-19, Theatre Centreville performed their fall play, Girls in the Boat, written by Alice Austen.
Girls in the Boat is inspired by the real life stories of the U.S. women’s Olympic rowing team, following an ensemble cast of female rowers through their life experiences and journeys that led them to the sport of rowing. They work alongside a male coach who faces criticism for working with a women’s team. Senior Noora Seidou described it as “the progression from the 1970s where women’s rowing really wasn’t a thing, to the 2000s where they go and they win the Olympics.” It is a show that explores female empowerment and gender equality, touching on events like Title IX and the U.S. women’s rowing team’s first time in the Olympics.
Packed with personal stories and fast-paced dialogue, Girls in the Boat was an exciting, inspiring testament to the strength and perseverance of female athletes. With versatile actors moving quickly from one role to another and impressive technical elements, Centreville’s fall play was definitely worth catching.
The script involves many details about the sport of rowing, with most of the characters being referred to only by their position within the boat. To learn more about rowing, the cast and crew visited South County Crew, getting to tour their facilities and get a lesson on rowing. “They were really nice and really helpful and informative,” said Noora Seidou, “We didn’t get to actually go on a boat, but we did get to go on an erg and kinda see what it was like to row.” An erg is a machine that rowers use to simulate rowing. The set of Girls in the Boat didn’t actually have a boat on stage, so the actors used this experience to help enhance their performance. She continued, “I think that helped us to simulate the arm movements a little bit.”
Seidou played Girl 7, one of the rowers on the boat. She describes her character as “definitely hardworking, well-spoken, an activist- she always stands up for what she believes in, and she’s generally just a great character.” Explaining what her character’s role is on the boat, she said “the front of the boat is the coxswain, they’re the one who sits forward, then there’s the stroke, their the one that sets the pace, they’re in the front, everyone follows them, and then I’m girl 7, so I’m behind the stroke.”
Sydney Copeland played the coach, who she says “guides [the team] on what the strategies are and moves boat positions.” The coach is the subject of controversy, as a man coaching a women’s team, so Copeland worked to get into the perspective of a man in that role. “I try to imagine what it would be like to be a coach. It was not socially acceptable for a male coach to be coaching girls because it’s supposed to be a downgrade.” She also tried to embody a male character physically by trying to “stand and talk like how a man would.”
Andre Jones was the understudy for the coach. “As an understudy, since you’re not onstage, you’re also working behind stage, so most of the time when we’re not actively being called upon [for] a role, we’ll work backstage with props, painting, and set design,” Jones explained. He said that his time spent helping backstage was one of his favorite parts of working on Girls in the Boat. Danielle Krafsig also worked on the tech crew this year, after having helped backstage in her role as an understudy in last year’s fall play, Mutually Assured Destruction. “I like [tech] more. I like being backstage. I felt like I was a bit more active during the show than I was last time,” said Krafsig.
Leading the tech crew was the stage manager, Emily Thomas, who “call[ed] cues for the actual show, [including] the lighting department, the sound department, and the projections department.” Thomas said, “I basically just make sure that all of the different departments work cohesively together so we have a nice show.” The show faced challenges with many crew members being out sick. “With our limited number of crew, we’ve had to figure out who’s qualified to do what and therefore we’ve had to move people around. People who are in our projections department would have to move over to lighting and then people in lighting would have to move over to sound because a sound person was out.”
An interesting technical aspect of this production was the use of projections on the stage. “This is the first show that we’ve done that really used [projections], so figuring that out has been a challenge in of itself,” said Thomas. The back of the stage was often lit in bright blues or vibrant reds in intense moments.
I had the opportunity to visit one of the final rehearsals before the opening of Girls in the Boat. I got to watch as the actors enthusiastically warmed up their voices for the fast-paced performance, standing in a large circle onstage as they loudly repeated classic vocal warm-ups. The thing that stood out the most at the rehearsal was the friendship and camaraderie that seemed to echo through the entire auditorium. “The best part [of working on a show] is the relationships you form and the way everybody bonds with how scary it is to go on in front of a bunch of people,” said Sydney Copeland. The main sentiment that was repeated among several people was how welcoming a community theater can be. Danielle Krafsig said, “I came in a little bit late, because I’m part of the tech crew, but everyone welcomed me with big arms and I felt like I was part of the family as soon as I walked up.”
Girls in the Boat was an impressive process that created relationships on and off stage. “You’ll meet a lot of great people and find a lot of great life skills through theater, like confidence and teamwork and time management, and I think a lot of people discredit it because of the reputation that theater people get,” said Sydney Copeland. She continued, “please join. If you’re interested and you think you’re good, you think you can do it, audition.” Theatre Centreville’s next show will be Rodger’s and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, which will have performances April 12-14.
