Submitted by Hailey Nicholls

Experience life, love and loss during the Rolla High School theater production of “Into the Woods”. The spring play will be hosted in the Rolla Middle School Auditorium from Feb. 16-18. Tickets can be purchased in-person or at the link bit.ly/RPSDRAMATIX . 

“Into the Woods” is a lengthier show than other productions from the RHS Drama Department; the play is structured as two acts, split by an intermission. The runtime has been estimated to be approximately 2 hours not including intermission.

Senior cast member, Matthew Ostertag, was cast in the role of the wolf and a steward’s man in this year’s musical. 

“My favorite moments are sitting on the couch and hearing the show go on while laughing and just cracking jokes with each other,” said Ostertag. 

“Into The Woods” is told mostly through songs with few spoken lines and is lengthier compared to other productions. Sophomore cast member Lou Ahl explained the reason for the jump in length.

“The majority of the show is music. There’s barely any dancing and the dialogue feeds in and out of the songs. So mostly it’s just blocking and singing but like two hours straight of that is a lot,” said Ahl.

Sophomore cast member Haiden Cramer who was plays the narrator noted the difference in difficulty of “Into the Woods” compared to past productions from the RHS Drama Department.

“I mean, it is definitely challenging. It’s a challenging show and it is so long compared to our other shows which have been like an hour, hour and a half. There’s just a lot more prep that has to be involved in this,” said Cramer.

Even with snow days and the specific difficulties of the production, the musical successfully continued and advanced its way to its upcoming performance dates. Senior cast member Saturn Leigh who plays Jack’s mother described how the production process has been different than others. 

“Charlie Brown was very similar. We had a lot of snow days,” said Leigh, “This year, we did virtual rehearsals where we had an hour where we got our blocking, and even though we weren’t acting things out we were still learning information that we needed to know. And it’s definitely been tough, especially since we’re performing earlier this year in February.”

Ahl shared a final note to possible audience members.

“Admire the fact that we put so much effort into this,” said Ahl.