Hampton School Board congratulates theater award winners

Trying something new can work out well, as Matt Jarrell pointed out at the Feb. 12 Hampton Township School Board meeting.

“We’re proud to recognize tonight the cast members and crew of the Hampton High School Drama Club fall play, ‘Puffs,’ for receiving 15 nominations for the first year they participated in the Prime Stage Theatre Drama Awards,” Jarrell, the board’s vice president, said.

Not only that, five students garnered first-place honors during awards night on Jan. 29. Winning for Best Student Scenic Design were Jacob Baker, Margaret Sager and Lily Stalewski, and taking the prize as Best Student Directors were Andrew Kaehly and Kiley Vande Geest.

They were judged for their work on “Puffs, or Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic,” a 2015 play by Matt Cox parodying the Harry Potter book series by J. K. Rowling. The Hampton students’ performances took place Nov. 9-11.

Other Prime Stage nominations for Hampton were Best Overall Production; Nathan Connelly, Best Actor; Echo Schomaeker, Best Actress; Ashley Kimmell, Best Supporting Actress; Margaret Sager, Best Student Stage Manager: Jacob Baker, Michael Petrucci and Garret Vasil, Best Student Lighting Design; Samantha Nicely, Best Student Prop Design; Shane Noone, Best Student Makeup Design; Jacob Baker, Best Student Use Of Creative Special Effects; Melanie Roth and Claire Topper, Best Student Sound Design; Kiley Vande Geest, Best Student Program/Poster Design; and Best Student Costume Design Team and Best Student Backstage-Run Crew Team.

“I think tonight was a great example of student awards that really speak to the fact that, in this district, the academics and the arts are closely intertwined,” Superintendent Michael Loughead said. “I’ve always said a great school district, a great high school, always has a great arts program that goes hand in hand with your academics program, and I believe we have that in our theater arts, our musical arts, our visual arts. We’re really very fortunate.”

Jill Hamlin, school board president, said she fielded inquiries about the elimination of some arts-related courses — Mixed Media II, Stage Tech and Production I and II, and Acting I and II — within the high school program of studies for 2024-25, which the board approved in January.

She questioned whether that indicates lessened interest among students, but Loughead explained that the removal pertained to classes with low or even nonexistent enrollment.

“They’ve just been on the books,” he said. “If you look at the program of studies for our size of our high school, it has tremendously more options than most high schools. And now, I think we’re starting to be more realistic about: Can we really list all these, when they’re not running for years?”