The drama department is ready to churn out another successful production, this one taking watchers through the wardrobe into the mystical land of Narnia. Drama teacher Elizabeth Deker looks forward to the play due to the massive amount of talented actors and actresses that tried out this year.

  “We had an incredible pool of talent come out for this show and there are only 16 speaking roles. We warned everyone after the initial auditions that there was a high likelihood that some of our normal contenders and some of our leading players weren’t going to get good parts. There was a possibility that they weren’t going to get speaking roles at all, and that did actually happen in a couple of places,” said Deker.

Though this means that some very skilled students have been put in the ensemble, it also means that all those with main roles were able to rise above the competition to earn their place. One of those students is returning actor Gabriel Moura, who was in “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown”.

   “It’s a new role. He has plenty of lines and plenty of stage presence. I’m honored [by] the role and I’m going to try to do my best to do it justice and have fun at the same time,” said Moura.

He will be playing the role of Aslan, the king of Narnia, and he’s really excited for it. He finds it interesting that he has to act like royalty, yet still remain humble, which is difficult when the other characters are meant to worship him.

“I love how he’s the king of Narnia and how people are awestruck when he comes onto the stage. [Throughout] the whole script, whenever he walks on the stage people are cheering and crowding around him. It’s an intense role to play,” said Moura.

Another returning actor is senior Tiffany Pham, who will play the part of Fenris Ulf, the head of the White Witch’s Secret Police. She is auditioning for George Mason’s theatre program and hopefully this role will help her develop how she plays with the physicality of other roles in the future.

“I, myself, think that I’m a really physical actor, so I like being really physical on stage. Being able to have stage combat and possibly doing rolls and somersaults on stage would be fun,” said Pham.

Some actors though, don’t know what type of acting they prefer since this is their first major performance. Sophomore Chase Helein must overcome this obstacle in order to successfully fulfill his role as the Dwarf since his only Potomac Falls production is the student-directed one acts last year.

“Body language is what I really need to work on. I need to get more of my inflections down. Projecting is something [else] I need to work on and just overall getting the characterization of the Dwarf down,” said Helein.

Sophomore Magdalena Nickle also struggles with the posture of her character, the White Witch, since she finds herself to be “nothing like her in reality”. To combat this she plans to practice as much as she can so that everything will look good once production week rolls around.

“I’m preparing for my role by reading through my script and [writing] down stage directions, or body movements that I want to do. I incorporate that into the script as I read through it and I highlight all my parts. During rehearsal we do multiple run throughs of the same scene to make sure that we know what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and it all [looks good],” said Nickle.

All the actors, as well as Deker hope that everything will turn out well and that they can have a great turnout like last year. Deker seems especially excited about being able to use handcrafted masks made by a professional mask maker to create “the magical look of Narnia” for some of the more defining roles. Hopefully, despite not being able to access the stage due to light renovations, the production will still go as planned.
  The show is Nov. 11, 12, and 13. The 11 and 12, it will be at 7:00 p.m. and the 13 will be at 2:00 p.m.