Theater students reflect on field trip to New York

Eyesha Sadiq, Entertainment Editor|November 1, 2022

Emma Short

Junior Sophia Wheeler and sophomores Christian Soriano, Riley Unterbug, Maya Ware, Shane Duggan and Keane Nair (left to right) pose on the Staten Island ferry. After doing workshops all day, they went on a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty.

Warning: Any violence displayed in photos were part of a stage combat workshop taught by trained professionals. No students were injured. 

Hebron Theater went on a field trip to New York City on Oct. 20, and they returned Oct. 24. There were 61 people that went including 49 students and 12 adults who attended the trip.

“Last year, I said, ‘why don’t we take a group of kids to New York?’” head director Scott Crew said. “We talked to the booster club parents and they said it sounded good. I went and talked to [principal Amy] Boughton and asked if it was something we could do. She said yes, [but] it needed to be a school sponsored activity.”

The trip consisted of workshops taught by professionals. The students went to four workshops, each one teaching a different aspect of theater. The workshops taught dance by Broadway performer Jeremy Benton, vocal training by TikTok celebrity Chris McCarrell, the business of show business and stage combat. 

Junior Sayuri Omae gets fake choked by a stage combat professional. At the workshop, students were taught how to fake choke, slap and punch.

“It was a lot of educational stuff,” senior Jaxon Ryan said. “[For] a lot of [us,] it was to get us out there so [that] we could start making connections [and] learn from some of the best people in the business. A lot of people hadn’t been to New York, so the people who wanted to go into theater really had no clue what the city was like and what it takes to be there.”

The theater students and chaperones watched four Broadway shows and one off-Broadway show: “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Kimberly Akimbo,” “1776,”  “Funny Girl” and “The Piano Lesson.” 

“My favorite [show] was ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’” sophomore Simran Makhani said. “It [was] so cool to see the lights and the sound. It was the best show I’ve ever technically seen. In ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ the guy that was running the lights was sitting right next to us opposed to sitting up [on] stage in a booth. I would definitely use the technique that he did using the lights and seeing everyone on the stage.”

This was the first trip the theater department has taken since 2019, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and not being able to travel. The students got to see many places around New York including the NYU campus, Washington Square Park, Canal Street and Central Park.

Students walk up a rock formation in Central Park. Students were taken on a walking tour of Central Park with tour guides from E.E. Tours who remained with the students for the majority of the trip.

“It’s the first [trip] we’ve done in a little while,” Ryan said. “It was a mixture of having so many new directors and new principles that got [the trip] pushed back. Now that we have a new director that’s going to be here for a little while, we are able to finally do stuff again.”

The theater department can only take trips out of state every other year. This year, each person paid $2,050 to go.

“I wish [theater] could take a tour every year because theater changes so much,” Crew said. “In the future, I would really like to take the kids to intensive [workshops] every year because I think it would build them and make them better at their craft and better at performing, which is what I want to do.”