theater
BY ANNA GRACE
Into the Woods cast
members (from left) Emma
Sohlberg, Hannah Miller,
Dylan Stasack, Audrey
Hudson and Anna Carlson
‘The play is about healing after
loss, not about loss itself’
PATRICK AVERY
– Dylan Stasack, SEHS Student
Out of the Darkness,
Into the Woods
South Eugene honors students with Sondheim musical
T
he cast is heartbroken, as though
the wave that swept away South
Eugene High School students
Jack Harnsongkram and Connor Ausland
on Feb. 5 took a vital piece of each of
student with it. The tragic deaths of the Mr.
Axemen candidates occurred just as the
theater department was preparing to open
Into the Woods, a play that offers an eerie
refl ection of the road so many of South’s
students have traveled this past week.
I sat down with a somber cast to discuss
the production with which they hope to
honor their departed friends and make
some sense out of their own grief.
The fi rst half of Into the Woods is
light and fun, with your favorite fairy tale
characters mixing it up in the woods. When
the curtain falls on the fi rst act, audiences
have laughed and cheered as complicated
and interwoven plots work themselves out
to beautiful music. It’s like sophomore
year, with a soundtrack. Ironically, this is
where the junior version of the script ends.
But they’re not doing the junior version.
This is South Eugene High School, after
all.
The second act deals with the end of
innocence. Relationships crumble and
senseless death takes the lives of beloved
friends. A woman, wicked witch that she is,
grieves the death of her daughter. There are
no easy answers offered, just the repeated
refrain “No one is alone.”
“The play is about healing after loss,
not about loss itself,” SEHS student actor
Dylan Stasack (who plays the Baker) says.
The theater students made a diffi cult
but unanimous decision to postpone their
opening a week. “We can barely function
in our classes,” Anna Carlson (Little
Red Riding Hood) says, “let alone be
emotionally prepared to fully commit to
this show.” Audrey Hudson (Cinderella)
adds, “We want to do the show justice,
because it is so demanding and so relevant
in our lives.”
While the public is aware of Connor
Auslund’s impact on the basketball court,
what many don’t realize is that both boys
easily traversed both the west and east
ends of the school. A Frenchie (French
Immersion student), Ausland sat next to
star performer Emma Sohlberg (The Witch)
in four classes, and the pair presented
nearly every group project as a song. Now
Sohlberg comes to class everyday and
takes her seat next to an empty desk. And
Harnsongkram’s brilliant smile fl ashed as
easily with his closest friends in the drama
department as it did with the rock-climbing
athletes in the Integrated Outdoor Program
courtyard.
What makes South an amazing school
are popular boys like Harnsongkram and
Ausland who would have no truck with
the clichéd social stratifi cation of a John
Hughes fi lm. The only way kids can make
sense of their peers’ deaths is by following
their example. Students are now not simply
tolerating their unlike-minded peers, but
actively supporting them. Theater students
showed up en mass to last Wednesday’s
basketball game; football coach Chad
Kessler purchased a block of tickets so
his players can attend Into the Woods as
a team. “What Jack and Connor’s death
taught us too late was that everyone should
come together,” Sohlberg says. The very
message that Sondheim leaves us with in
the second act song, No One is Alone:
No one is alone. Truly. No one is alone.
Sometimes people leave you halfway
through the wood. Others may deceive you.
You decide what’s good. You decide alone.
But no one is alone.
There is soft silence, then a breath when
I ask the cast about their hopes and fears
for opening night. When the students fi nd
their voices, what is echoed again and
again is the hope that people will attend the
play, and that the message of the show will
help others as it has helped them.
If what I saw at rehearsal is any
indication, this is going to be an incredible
production. Yes, I do teach at South, and
these are my students. I love them and am
biased, but my bias does not change the
fact that there happens to be a larger-than-
average pack of very talented kids in the
theater and music departments right now.
Their directors Patrick Avery, Kimberly
McConnell and Ron Black choose this
diffi cult and mature script to challenge
kids who made West Side Story look easy.
“Jack was so excited to see it,” Carlson
says with a sad smile.
Like the characters they are playing,
our students have emerged from this
tragedy a little older, much wiser and with
an ever-increasing appreciation for their
community. “Our reality has fundamentally
changed,” Hudson says. But if innocence
is lost, love and wisdom have surely taken
their place.
Nearly the last words Sondheim leaves
us with are: “Into the woods you have to
grope, but that’s the way you learn to cope.
Into the woods to fi nd their hope of getting
through their journey.”
ew
Into the Woods opens at 7:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 17, and
continues Feb. 18-19 and Feb. 23-26, with a 2 pm matinee
Sunday, Feb. 20, at South Eugene High School, 400 E.
19 th Ave.
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