Staging a Comeback: The drama begins -- with cast selection

It is customary at high schools that the posting of a cast list draws great crowds and leads to high drama in the hallways, complete with hugs and tears, high-fives and triumphant phone calls home.

At Luther Burbank High School, the morning the cast list for "She Stoops to Conquer" was posted, one person was there for the big moment.

Tiffany Capello had caught a bus that morning at 6:35 and by 6:50 was waiting outside the door of the drama class. It was Monday, Oct. 1, and the sun was just coming up. The only sound was a lawn mower humming over by the library.

Tiffany wanted desperately to be cast as the prim and proper Lady Hardcastle. For the last month, she had been walking around campus saying "evah" and "een-deed" and dreaming of the elegant gown she would wear on stage. Many days, she hung out after class was over, asking again and again about the role. Her drama teacher, Miki Sanders, was always patient and kind, assuring Tiffany that she would get some part in the play.

Sanders arrived a bit after 7 a.m., her arms loaded with books and an enormous bag of something soft. Inside the classroom, she pulled out the contents -- yards and yards of velvet in deep shades of burgundy and navy. The fabric would soon become shimmering gowns for the girls who landed leads in Burbank's first dramatic production in a decade.

During the next hour, Tiffany hovered while Sanders met with other students and prepared to draw up the cast list. Sanders sent Tiffany to the office to make some copies. When she returned, she asked again, "Do you need any other help?"

Sanders looked at Tiffany, then rose from her desk and gave her a hug.

"You're going to be fine, Lady Hardcastle."

Tiffany floated joyously away. Minutes before the first bell, Sanders pulled out a roll of yellow poster paper and began writing in large letters.

Lady Hardcastle: Tiffany "Stacy" Capello.

Lord Hardcastle: Leonardo Enriquez.

Kate: Aanchal Gounder.

Connie: Sunnie Dahl.

In the end, she listed 18 students in roles both major and minor.

She taped it up outside her door, then stooped to add the words: "Regular play practice this week. Lunchtime. Tues. 10/2 through Fri. 10/5."

Five hours later, the fifth-period kids began showing up for drama class. A few had seen the list in between their morning classes, but many were viewing it for the first time.

Aanchal walked up and pointed to the poster.

"What's that?"

"It's the cast list," Sanders told her as she started walking away without reading it.

"Wait!" Sanders said. "Aanchal, you're on here. Do you see who you are? You're Kate."

Aanchal stopped. "Are you serious? No way."

Juan Arellano walked up to his teacher with a stunned and happy look on his face. She had cast him as Marlow, a major role, one that would require a mix of romance, gallantry and befuddlement. Juan had gotten a taste of the theater the year before, when he did Shakespeare vignettes in English class, and he had secretly hoped for a meaty role. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you so much, Miss Sanders."

Leonardo Enriquez dropped to his seat in amazement, not only at the number of lines he had to learn as Lord Hardcastle, but at the trust his teacher had placed in him. He had never been to a live play and had no acting experience, save for a couple of skits as a child. His main claim to fame was football. Burbank's team was winning game after game this year and Leonardo was a dominant member of the line.

Now here was his teacher telling him he had the voice and demeanor of an actor. It felt nice, but also disconcerting.

Leonardo had been learning a lot lately about unexpected moments in life. Two years ago, his mother had died of a heart attack. Then the people who were caring for him and his siblings, an aunt and an uncle, had died, one after the other. He was living now with another aunt.

He needed to talk to someone about this drama business and decided to check in with his coach and his friends after school. He wondered if they would make fun of him or think it was weird.

While Leonardo worried he was in too deep, other kids felt they had gotten too little.

Brandon Cushing, a senior, was serious about drama and had been disappointed year after year when Burbank did no plays. He would never forget the first day of school his sophomore year. They were all set to put on major plays that year, but those plans washed out when some kids flooded the theater.

Now Brandon was disappointed again. He was cast in the role of Sir Charles Marlow, father to the lead character played by Juan. It was a respectable but smallish role, with about one and a half pages of lines. Brandon is a gentle and polite kind of student, and so offered no complaints. Instead, he told himself to think about "Grease," the musical they would do in the spring. Maybe he would get a bigger role then.

A sophomore named Rae Preston Williams III was less patient. He was cast as Diggory, a servant, and sat glumly on the edge of the stage absorbing the news. As it was, Rae was having a hard time. He had moved from North Carolina to Sacramento to live with his father after years of separation. He was unhappy at home and lonely in his new school.

The Diggory thing seemed like just another rotten development in his life. He didn't mind saying so.

"Every time I try out for a play, I always get a stupid little part. I'm pissed off. I'd rather set up or something."

Leonardo overheard and felt for his classmate.

"Hey, I'll be Diggory. It doesn't matter to me."

Meanwhile, Sunnie Dahl sat morosely at her desk. She had wanted the role of Kate but ended up as Constance "Connie" Neville. She passed a note to Aanchal.

Do you want to trade parts?

Aanchal liked the Connie role and knew how badly Sunnie wanted the part of Kate.

Sure. But we have to ask our teacher.

Sunnie did most of the pleading. "Can we switch? Please? Please? Please?"

Sanders had guessed this was coming. She was aware of Sunnie's desires and wanted to please her students. But she had a larger job to do. This was about bringing a drama program back to life, about restoring standards for a school full of kids who deserved them.

And so she held firm, believing in her heart that the bubbly and outgoing role of Connie was a better fit for the effervescent Sunnie.

What Sanders didn't see coming was that the role of Connie Neville would almost destroy the play.

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Putting on a play at any school involves a vast store of energy and time, and attention to a thousand details. There are sets to assemble and costumes to sew, props to gather and makeup to apply. Music must happen, and dance steps, too. And publicity, ticket sales, lights and sound.

Before coming to Burbank three years ago, Sanders had taught in Fresno at Roosevelt High School, a magnet school dedicated to the arts. There she was active in putting on dramas and renaissance fairs. They were elaborate events, and the school was highly adept at pulling them off. There was a built-in cache of costumes and props. There was money for paint, fabrics, whatever was needed. When it came to publicity or putting on the cast party, there were always plenty of parents around to get the jobs done.

At Burbank, Sanders found herself putting on a play in a vacuum.

The sets were being built by her morning "stage craft" class, filled with freshmen and sophomores with no experience. She was buying fabric and cutting out costumes at home on the weekends. She was waiting for the school to complete the paperwork so she could buy paint and supplies at Home Depot. She was searching for help with the background music and dance steps.

But the hardest part of all was helping her students envision what this play was going to require of them. There was no culture of rehearsals at Burbank, no sense of what it takes to create a finely polished production.

During October, Sanders would schedule rehearsals over the noon hour and few kids would show. She would ask for lines to be memorized, and still the students read from scripts.

Yet, those were the early days. The December show was still a couple months away. The weather was nice. The kids were jazzed. Bit by bit, the play was coming together.

The morning stage-craft class was elbow-deep in paint. An assistant from the office, Andria Hampton, offered to sew costumes. A math teacher who plays guitar said he would provide background music. The school's new dance instructor offered to choreograph the tavern scene. Two former graduates from Luther Burbank who now run a sound and light company promised to help with technical stuff.

As for the actors, many were working hard.

Sunnie had made peace with her Connie role and was nailing down the part, all sighs and coquettish congeniality. She wondered about a scene involving Mr. Hastings, played by a boy named Randell Hunt. The stage notes read: "They hug and kiss, while the lights flicker and shimmer." Sunnie didn't even know Randell.

Sanders tried to comfort and coach at the same time.

"Love scenes are all about the effect. You are creating an illusion on stage. It's not real. It's all pretend."

Tiffany, meanwhile, was becoming a walking Lady Hardcastle, cranky and indignant.

"I tell you, Lord Hardcastle, you're very odd," she would lecture her stage husband. Then, turning to her imaginary niece, she would sternly shake her head. "Indeed, Constance, you amaze me. Such a young girl as you wants jewels?"

Outside of class, Leonardo talked

to his teammates about the play. They offered congratulations, and a hard time. Days later, he recalled their words:

"YOU'RE doing acting?"

"Man, don't look at me when you're up there on that stage because I'm gonna be sitting there laughing."

Leonardo took it all in stride. He found himself enjoying the world of acting. He would sit in class, sometimes holding a football, spouting quotes from the play as if they were the lines of a favorite poem. His voice was deep and smooth, filled with pauses at just the right time.

"What say you," was one passage he was fond of repeating, "to a friend that would take this bitter bargain off your hands?"

Aanchal was still and reserved in class as she learned the role of Kate. At home, though, her mother found she had a different daughter. Aanchal had always been shy and quiet, sitting in silence when company came. Suddenly, she had become a chatterbox, and, in an amazing development, had danced in front of friends at her sweet 16 party. She was a beautiful dancer -- from hip-hop to Hindi -- but would never in the past have let on.

Randell Hunt, playing Mr. Hastings, was turning out to be a bright light in the class. He was young, just a sophomore, and his auditions had been a curious and clumsy mixture. He stumbled over the words, mangling some of them terribly. Yet there was energy when Randell took the stage. He would hold out his arms with the intensity of a man in love, or leap in with gusto -- "Bravo! Bravo!" -- during his verbal give-and-takes. And unlike Sunnie, who had misgivings, Randell couldn't wait for that kiss.

The energy came from a comfortable place within. When Randell was younger, he discovered he could make people laugh. You should be a comedian, the kids always told him. When he got a little older, he acted in church plays, and even when he performed the dark role of Cain, he had a sense that he was entertaining others. Now that he had a major role in the play, he was one of the most devoted actors in the class, and the most enchanted by the old play's twists and turns: "I think I'm the only one here who really loves this play," he said once. "I'm just totally into it."

One day at practice, Randell was among the few who knew his lines.

"Randell, you're really something," his teacher said. "Do you know how good it is to have you around?"

"Well, yeah," he said, tipping his face to the side and grinning. She laughed and he was glad, both for the compliment and for the chance to make someone smile.

---

The end of October brought trouble.

The boy who held the critical role of Tony, son of the Lord and Lady Hardcastle, was rarely showing up for practices. He had health problems, as well as competing commitments. It was clear that someone else needed to prepare for the role. Sanders asked Rae Williams, who had been disappointed about getting a small role, to think about it.

Rae didn't have a good feeling about that. He was hurt by the original casting and uncertain where he fit in. He noticed his teacher still was encouraging the other boy and thought to himself: She doesn't believe I can really do it.

In truth, Sanders did have doubts. She liked Rae a lot and wanted to give him a chance. But he raced through his lines in a voice that was much too quiet. The whole play revolved around Tony's noisy antics; to not be able to hear or understand him would be deadly.

Then came a huge blow.

During the last week of October, both Tiffany and Sunnie disappeared. No sign. No calls. After a week of absences, Sanders checked with the office and learned that both girls had left the school for personal reasons and were not expected to return.

Sanders was devastated. These were the two students who had been the most invested in the play from the beginning. She had just spent the weekend cutting out Tiffany's velvet dress. Now they were gone. She felt as though her play had been gutted.

It was a Monday, the 29th of October. The play was six weeks away. Sanders walked into her classroom and looked around frantically: Who else could play these roles?

She approached a quiet junior named Serena Saephan and asked her to step in as Lady Hardcastle. Serena was a sliver of a girl who had transferred into the class in early October and missed the auditions. During a recent health fair, she had taken part in an anti-drinking skit. She played a girl who got drunk and fainted. Sanders had been impressed by Serena's serious nature and reliability -- something she sorely needed right now.

The role of Connie was trickier.

Most of the girls in the class were not interested in being on stage. There was really only one possibility -- Joeinique Caesar. Joeinique had done poorly during auditions -- tiny voice, faltering words -- but there had been something about her that made Sanders keep giving her chances.

"Will you do it?" Sanders asked. "I know you can do this."

Joeinique nodded her head. The role of Connie was filled. At least for the moment.

That same day, Sanders made another decision. She formally assigned Rae the role of Tony. That prompted a frenetic round of musical chairs. Rae's role of Diggory went to another boy, leading to the shifting of several other roles.

The next day, the rain came, along with the wind. The sky was roiling. It was gray and cold.

And one of the faithful rocks in the play -- Leonardo Enriquez -- was as down as a young man could be. His football team, which had been experiencing its first winning season in years, had just been informed that its record was being erased because of an ineligible player.

Sanders could see the storm on his face and did what she could to raise his spirits.

"Leonardo, I'm so sorry," she said, kneeling in front of him. "But you've got to get over this. This play can be another good memory from your senior year. You have stature. You have charisma. You are a great actor."

She was begging. She had just replaced three of her leads. She didn't want to lose another, especially not Leonardo.

* TUESDAY: Stumbling over lines and life.

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The Bee's Deb Kollars can be reached at (916) 321-1090 or dkollars@sacbee.com.