Inside "The Color Purple" at Hillside
“When life descends into the pit I must become my own candle willingly burning myself to light up the darkness around me.” This is a quote from the renowned novel, film and musical, The Color Purple by Alice Walker. The Hillside High School drama department opens this 2018-2019 season of plays with The Color Purple, which will be produced and directed by the Hillside theatre teacher, Mr. Wendell Tabb.
Mr. Tabb is known in all of Durham as he was “Durham’s Teacher of the Year” and was even honored as one of 20 educators nationwide at the Tony Awards last year. Not only that, he’s known for his phenomenal directing at Hillside, when it comes to creating new productions. Students, staff and everyone else in the Durham community will get to see the new play, The Color Purple, being directed by Mr. Tabb and put together by Hillside students starting Nov. 9th and ending on Nov. 11th. For now, students have been rehearsing after school from 4:30pm to 6:30pm everyday.
Mr. Tabb’s choice of play had to do with the themes The Color Purple portrays. He said, “I was drawn to the movie version which has become an American Classic. I always thought that the novel and movie should one day become a play. Oprah Winfrey and team made it a reality. I knew that if I was ever granted the ‘rights’ to produce the show, I would jump at the opportunity. The show gives me an opportunity to really challenge the students in presenting professional theatre.” When it comes to producing it, his plan is to focus more on the acting and “digging deep into the inner souls of each character.”
The process of bringing together the play will take about 8 weeks, according to Mr. Tabb. There are nearly 100 students in the play as of right now. That includes actors, dancers, pit singers, musicians and backstage crew.
The casting of The Color Purple was based on, as stated by Mr. Tabb, “the individual student Audition, a panel of adjudicators that included the vocal director, choreographer and myself selected the best person for the role.” After getting to know the cast, Mr. Tabb said the cast was amazing and it’s truly an “All Star cast of performers.” When it comes to putting a musical together, there will be struggles faced by the director. Mr. Tabb explained the interest in the The Color Purple was very high and it lead to so many students wanting to participate, so he’s been trying to incorporate as many students as he could into the play, which has made it difficult for him.
Despite all the struggles and difficulties, it’ll all be worth it at the end when the play is finally displayed to the public on Nov. 9th, 2018 thru Nov. 11th, 2018.
