HARLINGEN – “Where am I?” asks Wilbur, played by Norman Torres.
“I have never been here before,” continues Norman, 17, as he rehearsed for the production of “Charlotte’s Web.”
More than 15 Harlingen High School students will present the cherished story in three shows. The show for the general public will take place tonight at the Harlingen Performing Arts Center at 3217 Wilson Road. Two more shows exclusively for students will take place at the same venue tomorrow and Oct. 26.
The young actors and the tech crew, all students in the HHS Theater Arts Department, have spent the past several weeks preparing for tonight’s event.
“We started practicing back in September,” said Courtney MacNeil, theater arts teacher.
The play is a classic children’s story by E.B. White, who also wrote “The Trumpet of the Swan” and “Stuart Little.” He is also known for editing and updating William Strunk Jr.’s “The Elements of Style.”
“Charlotte’s Web” is a popular selection for many student productions. A 2006 production featured the voices of Dakota Fanning, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Buscemi, Robert Redford and numerous other stars.
It’s a major production in any sense. At Harlingen High School last week, the room was filled with activity as students prepared wooden sets. One student in a light blue shirt with sleeves rolled up stood on a chair and painted the struts of one set red. Another removed excess foam insulation from the bottom of a brown structure. Still another affixed white feathers to an orange cap.
In the story, Charlotte is a barn spider who becomes friends with a pig named Wilbur. He’s a bit on the small side, but he has many friends. Fern Arable, played by Cara Cash in tonight’s production, is heartbroken to learn her father, played by Mark Peinado, is sending Wilbur to the slaughterhouse.
“He isn’t just an ordinary pig,” she says through her tears.
“I don’t see why he needs the ax,” she says. “You can’t kill him just because it’s smaller than the others.”
“Fern, I know more about raising a litter of pigs than you do,” answers her father, a.k.a. Peinado, an HHSS senior.
After more entreaties, he relents for the moment.
In the meantime, more of Wilbur’s friends come to his rescue, including Charlotte the spider. Certainly she can’t speak, but she certainly has a voice. That voice lies within the threads she spins to form a web or, in this case, such brief statements as “Some pig.”
But who can play her in tonight’s performance? Emily Ornelas, that’s who.
“I am really excited to be Charlotte only because she’s very confident and cheerful,” said Emily, 17. “I think sometimes I like to picture myself as Charlotte in real life.”
Emily was busily wrapping twine around letters to be used as Charlotte’s messages. Quite a few students seemed to enjoy using twine as Charlotte’s threads to wrap around the letters. She, like the others, were experiencing a rush of enthusiasm as they made ready.
“I feel really confident,” said Emily, a senior. “It’s going very nicely. I’m excited to see it turn out, how it’s going to be. We’re doing all this technical work, a lot of hands-on building, a lot of crafts.”
It could be said the students are practicing their stage craft on many levels.
Traditionally, stage craft refers to one’s skill on the stage when performing a character. It’s about poise, movement, voice inflections, facial expressions, blocking, etc. Crafting the stage sets is an extension of that, because those sets are themselves actors with important roles to play.
