From March 7-9, the Patriot Theatre Company put on a production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in the West Auditorium, bringing the audience to a cutthroat competition between a wide variety of characters. There were 33 students part of the cast and ensemble that helped put on the performance.

Two separate casts played the lead roles with each cast performing in two out of the four total shows. This encouraged the Stevenson community to see both sets of shows, ensuring that more theatre students had opportunities to take on lead roles for Stevenson’s winter chamber musical. It communicated overarching themes like individuality, discovering self-worth, and connections with loved ones through dramatic dances and musical numbers that brought each character’s story to life.

Many theatre students thought that each character had a unique identity, all complemented by excellent acting and catchy songs. For Kylie Collins ’26, her role as Marcy Park meant more to her than just a character she was asked to play.

“[Marcy] really shows the toll that anxiety and stress can take on someone,” Collins said. “I think she’s such an important representative for mental health within children.”

Although students like Collins perform their character for a worthy cause, they often found immersing themselves in their character difficult at times. Bradyn Booker ’25 recounts how she had to go outside her comfort zone to perform a character with a different persona than herself.

“I’m a lot different from my character, in the sense that I am a lot more mellow than Leaf Coneybear,” Booker said. “My biggest difficulty [during the performance] was finding energy for my character.”

Similar to Booker, Collins also didn’t find the role of Marcy Park to be a perfect personality match for herself. However, she still acknowledges the ease of embodying the role with the help of Stevenson’s resources.

“In addition to acting classes, singing, private voice lessons, choir, [and] dance class, we also have an entire costume shop in the PAC,” Collins said. “It’s all super well thought-out, and we are very lucky that not all schools have that opportunity.”

For Ethan Michaels ’26, his preparation isn’t just limited to what he does at Stevenson, however. Michaels notes how his preparation continues as he goes home after practice each night, ensuring that the role he casts in is played as true to the disposition of his character as possible.

“We research and analyze who our characters are as people and what significance they hold, not just the plot but also the audience,” Michaels said. “We work on that throughout the process [of learning the character] and that slowly starts to build into incorporating it into everything we do.”

While every member puts in work to perfect their role, Collin Narens ’26 knows that their amount of work isn’t necessarily seen by the public. A large part of production is done behind the scenes, which Narens believes is the most overlooked member of the play by the audience.

“I think the least known role is probably stage management, which is people backstage in the roof, in the back, and also in the wings, who are basically telling all the actors where to be,” Narens said. “They’re telling the people who are running the lights and the sounds when to start them.”

While most of the show is pre-planned and ready to roll before performance day, Narens points out that a lot still happens on the spot. According to Narens, the play also actively encouraged audience members to participate in the play, increasing engagement and providing a more immersive experience.

“We also practiced audience volunteers, so that was really fun to interact with a bunch of new people in the process,” Narens said.

In a similar manner with the audience volunteers, the actors have found that improvisation continues through their lines as well. Michaels, among other actors, went into the show with the majority of her lines set, but she was provided some leeway from herdirectors to use their sense of creativity to embody their characters.

“I like whenever we get to ad-lib or improvise, because it really spices things up, and it will change every night,” Michaels said.

As the show wrapped up on March 9, the next appearance of the Patriot Theater Company will be the One Acts taking place on May 2.​​ Collins feels that the show was a collective effort, made possible by the hard work of all students.

“All of them are student directed, student costumes, and student lighting, it’s all written by the students as well,” Collins said. “A lot of seniors are proud to see their last time performing because they’ll be directing for One Acts.”