CVHS thespians take on ‘Pride and Prejudice’

CLINTON TOWNSHIP — The trials and travails of Regency gentry will come to life on stage for the Chippewa Valley High School Drama Club’s production of Jane Austen’s 1813 story “Pride and Prejudice.”

One of English literature’s seminal works, Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” sees Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy overcome their personal foibles and work through social and romantic trappings of early 1800s English aristocratic life. The show uses a script written by playwright Melissa Leilani Larson, which adapts Austen’s novel into a roughly two-hour play.

“It’s a classic and a lot of people know it, and it’s just a really fun show to put on,” said Layla Perry, a junior who plays Elizabeth Bennet and serves as vice president of the drama club. “Most of us know (the material) fairly well.”

Seniors in the club are some of the most familiar with the work, with Assistant Director and Drama Club President Bella Bunnell saying “Pride and Prejudice” was assigned reading for the class of 2026 during junior year.

“Overall, everyone knows the premise of ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ and even if they didn’t, they did good research before coming to the auditions,” Bunnell said.

Rehearsals have been going strong for the all-student production despite some early challenges, as Mr. Darcy’s actor Blake LaFontaine can attest.

“I think that everyone has been doing an amazing job,” said LaFontaine, a senior. “The first week of rehearsal, we didn’t really have the stage or access to start blocking stuff out, so we spent that first week just doing character work; (figuring out) the background of your character, why they would act certain ways, what they do. I feel like everyone has been taking those and, especially from the first time we’ve been putting it on stage, I can see the development of everyone putting more emotion into what they are doing or trying something new with a line; delivering it differently every time to see what sounds best.”

Being put on by the Chippewa Valley High School Drama Club, “Pride and Prejudice” has a different production background and approach from the larger musical productions held earlier in the school year. The student-run group allows those with an interest in the theater to further pursue an understanding and education of it beyond what’s offered from being involved in the annual musical production. Sometimes that involves going to see productions across the region, and sometimes that involves doing improvisational acting or being hands-on with producing on a show.

“It’s a club that encases all of the aspects of theater,” Bunnell said. “We’ve been working on a lot of improv, we’re working on set design and, hopefully, next week we’ll be doing some costuming just to show our members what it’s like to really (be involved with) certain things in theater.”

Where the musicals tend to rent sets from professional productions, the Drama Club students will be building a rotating set for the show. Both the Darcy and Bennet homes will be represented on the stage, the students using rotating platforms to flip from one home to the other.

Production size also differs between the musical and club productions, with “Pride and Prejudice” featuring 25 actors with at least five students on the crew. The smaller size helps with the social dynamics of the production — the cliques that tend to form within the musical casts of hundreds are less present in a production of about 30 people — along with giving actors more opportunities to showcase their talents.

“Everyone, in a sense, has their own spotlight in a way,” Perry said. “I feel everyone in the play has their little moments where they (are featured). Even if you’re (in an) ensemble, you have your moments. We all have our moments to shine, whereas being in a musical it’s a lot harder to have everyone have their moment because it’s such a big cast. But being that it’s a smaller cast in the play, everyone feels like they’re involved, and everyone feels like they’re contributing to the show in a way.”

The last time the Drama Club took the stage at Chippewa Valley, they put on a relatively deep cut of theater with John Patrick’s “The Curious Savage.” Moving from a lesser-known show to one of the most recognized works of the 19th Century, the club is looking to build upon their prior success by notching another one and building toward the future.

“There’s no way to describe the plot of ‘The Curious Savage,’ so people went in not expecting a lot and I feel like they were pleasantly surprised with our cast,” LaFontaine said. “I feel like that gives a good impression of what we can do in the future, especially given the cast of ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ Most of them are underclassmen and even more of them are freshmen or sophomores, which is incredibly impressive. That, as a senior, gives me hope that the production will continue and thrive even after I graduate.”

And for what will make the weekend run of “Pride and Prejudice” a success? Bunnell says it is to get the audience immersed in their take on Austen’s acclaimed story.

“I think that our cast has been doing such a good job, I hope that the audience just gets sucked in, that the audience doesn’t need a distraction,” Bunnell said. “They can just put that away and they can be immersed in the moment with how good our cast has been.”

The Chippewa Valley High School Drama Club’s production of “Pride and Prejudice” will run at the school’s Henrichsen Auditorium on Thursday, March 13 and Friday, March 14. Evening shows will take place both days at 7 p.m., while senior citizens will have a special discounted matinee at 1:30 p.m. on March 13 and a general matinee will be held at 1 p.m. on March 14.

Information to order tickets online can be found at cvhsmusicals.org. Seniors can call (313) 910-9662 or email performingartscvhs@gmail.com for ticket information for the discounted March 13 show.