In need of a new theater teacher, Wootton hired a new director to spearhead the theater productions moving forward. This man had one mission: to resurrect the theater department. After escapades in coaching boxing and getting rejected from clown college, Dr. Julian Lazarus took the mantle as the new theater director at the start of the 2019-2020 school year.
At the beginning of the virtual year, staff were admitted into the school building, though students were not. This made getting the theater program started a challenge, as the facility lacked organization in its empty state. “Every closet and every door that I opened was a Pandora’s box of messes,” Lazarus said.
Throughout the fall and winter of the virtual school year, Lazarus directed an online production, Lead Rings. With 18 students involved, scenes were filmed remotely and edited by students. “The camera picks up a lot of subtlety that real theatre doesn’t, because you’re framed so close, and you can control which takes you use instead of leaving it up to the live performance on show night. It was definitely different from in-person theater, since so much of the process is done individually, and there isn’t an actual person with you to have chemistry with or an audience to work with, but it was a cool experience,” Lead Rings actor and 2023 alum Hailey Ahn said.
In Lazarus’s second year of directing and first year of in-person teaching here, he directed the comedic play Puffs and the family musical The Little Mermaid. “I was trying to pick shows that people wanted to be part of,” Lazarus said.
Lazarus was met with the challenge of reviving the theater department, which was polluted with poor traditions and faulty technical equipment in prior years. Lazarus was tasked with replacing the underpowered speakers and ruined soundboard, improving one of the department’s weakest links. “When I first got here, everyone – the community, the staff, the students, their big issue was the sound system,” Lazarus said.
In its third year of production, the theater department was able to “stretch its legs” with productions of the comedy Clue and the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Increased student participation and audience engagement proved Lazarus’s success in reviving the department. “Students were stepping up to become leaders and we were starting to get a handle on our backstage system,” Lazarus said.
The increased engagement from cast and crew members allowed for a strong sense of camaraderie and organization within the department. “We were beginning to lay down a structure that really worked for everyone,” Lazarus said.
In Lazarus’ fourth year of directing, the department performed the historic tragedy Radium Girls and the musical satire How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. By selecting such tonally distinct shows, Lazarus hoped to increase the variety of the department’s endeavors. “If you do the same kinds of shows over and over again, then it’s the same students who shine in those kinds of roles. For a department, especially in an educational setting, by the time you’ve done four years of shows, you should have done all kinds of shows,” Lazarus said.
For the fourth year’s selection of shows, Lazarus chose to focus on the theme of corporate greed, as represented as an antagonizing force in Radium Girls and as a comedic focal point in How to Succeed. This decision wasn’t just made on a whim, as Lazarus is partial to selecting themes for his years of directing. “If I was gonna be here next year, I would probably do a focus on Shakespeare. We would do Romeo and Juliet or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and then we would do Something Rotten as a comedy musical, but still have that kind of theme going through it,” Lazarus said.
In Lazarus’ fifth and final year with the school, he directed three productions those being Elephant and Piggie’s We Are in a Play!, Game of Tiaras, and The Wizard of Oz. Elephant and Piggie and Game of Tiaras were performed on the same weekends with separate casts, for two weekends in a row. “Wootton used to do three shows, and we also did two weekends, which is how it should be,” Lazarus said.
In the previous year, Lazarus was set to be transferred to another school, but ultimately was assigned to stay at Wootton. As he hadn’t originally planned on staying in the school this year, Lazarus took the opportunity to treat this year like a “bonus year” for him. “This was a year just to really have a lot of fun,” Lazarus said.
At the end of Lazarus’s five-year legacy, the theater department grew from 18 to 183 students involved in a single show. The department also saw financial gain, as the department now has nearly $40,000 in income. “I think we did some really good work. We restructured and rebranded the entire department. Anyone who’s coming in here next year should be able to walk in and do a show in the fall without any problems,” Lazarus said.
Though Lazarus must leave the community, the impact he has left behind remains present in the theater space. “He’s been a great part of my growth as an actor,” sophomore Ace Kippola said.
