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CLINTON TOWNSHIP — If it takes a village to stage a musical, a small team of Chippewa Valley High School students are setting out to prove it takes a club to stage a play.
Known for prior productions of murder mysteries “Clue” and “The Plot, Like Gravy, Thickens,” the Chippewa Valley High School Drama Club returns to the stage with a student-run production of the midcentury comedy “The Curious Savage.”
Written by playwright John Patrick, “Savage” follows elderly millionaire widow Ethel P. Savage after she is placed in a sanatorium by her stepchildren as retribution for setting up a memorial fund rather than allowing them to inherit the money. Much of the play revolves around the stepchildren attempting to acquire the inheritance bonds from Ethel while the collective Savages deal with the eccentric residents and staff of the sanitorium.
The club was inspired by how the show questions the nature of “sanity” and how certain club members would enjoy putting it on. “Savage” marks the Drama Club’s first performance since 2023. Having fizzled out in the wake of initial COVID-19 precautions, rebuilding the club and its place in Chippewa Valley student life has been a key goal for students since in-person schooling resumed.
“We’ve been really focused on bringing it back and building it back up to something big again,” said senior Mackenzie Martin, director of the production and the Chippewa Valley High School Drama Club’s president. “We’re trying to do more events and less, ‘We’re having a meeting; come if you would like to come,’ and more, ‘We’re having a meeting; bring a friend. Bring two friends.’ Because we’ve been able to grow and get more involvement in the past few years, we knew we would be able to pull off doing a show.”
Through open auditions in January, the club was able to pull together a cast of eight students running the full range of ages and prior experience with theater.
“Some of our cast members, this is their first show,” Martin said. “And some of them, this is the first show where they’ve been featured as a lead, whereas in the past they’ve been ensemble in some of our musicals that we do.”
Senior Lilianna Moss, who plays Ethel Savage, has a wealth of experience on the Chippewa Valley and other stages. While “Savage” only recently became known to her when the club selected it as its spring production, Moss is glad that the more underground work is what the club settled on.
“I definitely think younger audiences will think it’s a little confusing at first, but there’s definitely some funniness that they’ll get along with well,” Moss said. “I think that the audience will love this show. I think that they’ll feel for the characters, and I really do think that they’ll enjoy this.”
Students and club members have not only volunteered to perform in “Savage.” The Drama Club spends a considerable amount of time focusing on technical aspects of theater and has put those skills into practice building the set and getting ready to crew the show’s three performances.
“We built the set entirely ourselves,” Martin said. “The walls, the bookshelves, the window, the things you see through the window — that was all made by us. We came in during break and we were here every day from 10 to 4 o’clock just building, painting, putting stuff together, finding props, finding furniture, all that stuff. It’s been a big project.”
Senior Nina Como, an experienced stage manager on prior Chippewa Valley productions and the Drama Club’s vice president, has added assistant director duties to her plate for the run of “Savage.” Under her command are around 10 students handling lights, sounds and props, all of whom have been hard at work on the technical details during rehearsals. But compared to the large, rented sets of the school’s prior musicals, members of the crew have more manageable tasks ahead of them with the club’s production.
“It was nice, in a tech sense, knowing that (the crew) wouldn’t have to run,” Como said. “During ‘Cinderella’ (the club’s fall 2024 musical) we had a lot of big moving structures, so it’s definitely a show that’s a lot more lax and we have people backstage in case anything happens with mics or if the worst case happens.”
Martin believes a good run of “Savage” would open new doors for the club. Not only could it boost its relevance among students and let them know about an alternative to the school’s musicals, but it could also give the club the standing to do more activities.
“If we have a good three-night run — everything goes smoothly, we have audiences — that will open doors to opportunities and things that we’re allowed to do, such as trips going downtown and seeing a play (or) going to see a movie, because there have been so many movie adaptations of shows coming out,” Martin said. “It raises our funding that we have, so it gives us more opportunities for things we’re able to do, and it also opens the door to bigger productions that we’re able to do.”
The Chippewa Valley High School Drama Club’s production of “The Curious Savage” will play at the school’s theater at 6 p.m. Thursday, April 3; 7 p.m. Friday, April 4; and 7 p.m. Saturday, April 5. Tickets can be purchased at cvhsmusicals.org.
Chippewa Valley High School students interested in the Drama Club can find them in the auditorium on Wednesdays.
