Strike and Cast Party!


After a weekend full of excitement, it was time to say goodbye to the Spring One-Acts. Yesterday, the cast and crew took down the set of the play. The stage, Green Room, and shop were cleaned, giving us all a sense of emptiness. Just a couple of days ago, the stage and Green Room bustled with actors and stage managers. Everything seemed quiet….too quiet.

The silence didn’t last long because we headed over to Ms. Norris’ house for our cast party. She kindly hosted the cast party at her house, which was beautifully situated near a lake. After a short dip in the lake, we went back indoors where we played ‘Hot seat,” a game in which we reminisced our past accomplishments and thanked others for their service. It was very emotional, but we were glad to put a closure on the experience. After Hot Seat, we celebrated with pizza and cake. For the remainder of the evening, we laughed and talked until it was time to go back to school.

I would like to thank everyone that came to our performance. We hope you had a great time! I would also like to thank everyone who participated in the Spring One-Acts. I am very honored to have been part of this wonderful cast. A special thanks to Liz, Thomas, Craig, and Hung for leading us in the right direction. Your exemplary character will remain with us at Berkshire as you embark on your college adventures. We will miss you! 



by Jeff Erazo, '15

Closing Night!


After lunch on Saturday, the cast of the Spring One Acts scurried to the Green Room to get ready for the two o'clock matinee. It was going to be a long day, so all of us had to mentally prepare ourselves for two shows. Once the first show was over, the cast celebrated in the Green Room, but soon got ready for the second show. 

After a very emotional warm up, we performed our second show with both confidence and a bit of fear, for overconfidence is not a good thing. We all agreed that it was important not to let our awesome matinee performance get to our heads, since we still had obstacles to overcome. 

As the clock stuck 7:30pm, the final performance began. The crowds roared with laughter as actors from all three plays stepped on stage and performed. At the end of our show, we were showered with compliments friends and family who had a great time. Afterwards, we went to McDonald’s, some of us still in our costumes, for a mini celebration! Of course, the McDonald’s employees were not expecting a bunch of theater kids at their restaurant at 11pm, but we were pretty glad to slurp on McFlurries after a long day!

by Jeff Erazo, '15

Spring One-Acts: Opening Night!


Last night, the cast of the Spring One-Acts opened up the doors to the public. As usual, people from all the Berkshire community, friends and family flooded the lobby, anxiously waiting for the theater doors to open. We had a large turnout of people, but since the show was only able to seat about 100 people, many were turned down. So if you're planning to see the show today, get here early!

The show commenced with the short play, Small Actors, a comical, yet heartwarming story of a girl who lies to her parents about getting the lead in the school play. The play It's Not You, It's Me got the audience laughing as Jack and Catherine repeatedly get dumped by many people. The third play, !Artistic Inspiration, received lots of laughs from the audience as two writers try to produce the worst play in America. 

After the successful night, excited family members and friends congratulated us on the awesome performance. The entire cast felt accomplished and we can't wait for our next two shows! See you there!


 by Jeff Erazo, '15


Thursday Think Tank With Hung: Higher Ground

By the time I could sneak into the shower without disturbing anyone on the second floor, I lost all my senses of time. It didn’t matter. Walking back to the room to check my watch, particularly around dead midnight, became too much of a hassle. So I kept going. Bathroom lights. Check. Steamy hot water. Check. Meditative mode. Check.

My laptop was now situated on my bed, patiently waiting for me to come back and look back at myriad of theater cheat sheets, Literature crib sheets (AP Literature was in 8 hours), and Latin notes (A test on fictional novel regarding Catilina’s conspiracy was in 13). Unlucky for him, and unusual for me, the shower lasted an hour, about a quarter of the time the Dress Rehearsal took. Dress rehearsal ended a few hours before, at around 9. 30.

9.30, the Green Room was drowned in shouts and screams and sighs of relief. That was all I could remember. Everything else, exhausted by everybody’s energy for four hours, seemed to have happened relatively too quickly. The extended warm-up, the scene changes, the three plays, all done.

Mr. Howard came in with a smile on his face, which was in and by itself a helluva blessing. But then out of the corner of my eye, there came something else that struck me even deeper, that clang upon my shoulder even until I was in the shower an hour and a half later. It was intriguing, really, to see frowns on the faces usually lit up by curves with concave up.

Some seemed to be saddened by the fact that this would be their last high school performance.

Some felt bad for the things that got messed up.

And I just sat there wondering if these hollow eyes of theirs, darting straight through nothingness, are parts of a never-ending cycle of restlessness that keeps spinning a sane man round, and if these eyes are the signifiers of so many downs that bring the human-voids shape up to a dark, dense, and desolate places.

Truth be told, the first half of my shower was boiled up with fears of emotional breakdown, fears that I would find no cure, no answer, no resolutions to that rich horror I encountered early in the night. What I did find, though, was that doing 12-count in the shower was the best idea that ever came across my mind. (I had a thing for that exercise, considering that too much tension, for whatever the reason, bottles up around my lower back.)

Before my body had any chance of becoming even more of a tangible, weighty, constricting disappointment, I found myself letting my fingers walk slowly on the shower floor. I felt loose. I felt droplets of water dripping into my nostrils. But I felt good. The fingers sprung into life. And I was planted there, sensing no incentives of stopping, but instead a tingling sensation in my lower back, a sudden urge to let out whatever bottled up there, my thoughts maybe, run wild and then huddle them all up into a paragraph or two as a token of gratitude to the eighteen souls that have been with me for the past few months. Things, after all, fall into place because these people can shoot with perfect aim.

It’s cool how there is a certain feeling of liberation that comes with the knowledge that you have done everything necessary to achieve something and now the final outcome depends upon variables you have no control over. So screw your pessimism, partner. Grab it by the neck. Kick it out of your system. Grab my hand. Look me in the eye. Let me tell you something.

We are cool.

And seniors, why can’t we feel like it’s not the last but the tenth to the last?

Departures are heart-breaking, true, but only if we believe them so. So screw your good-byes, gorgeous. Do an elaborated handshake with me. Look me in the eye. Let me tell you something.

I’ll see you later.

True, May has not been a kind month. Between wearing away the floor of my room with my incessant pacing and constantly checking the cheat sheet, fearfully ticking each day off, between your random outbursts of anger and uncalled-for containment of joy, time has both lingered on forever and rushed by impossibly fast. Now, though, we can let go. We can feel at peace,

“Because we are supposed to be here.”

And there is a certain groundless joy that I cannot help but welcome with open arms, when I know, and you know too, when all human resources have been exhausted for the cause as much as humanely possible. We’re making May awesome, partner. We’re making the show awesome. And it will last, partner. It will be our legacy. And it will last.

The lights went off. The shower went off. I snapped out of my session and walked out into the hallway. It was pitch black, and my eyes were darting straight through nothingness, seeing through, at last, the never-ending cycle of restlessness that spins sane man round ‘til he learns how to breathes fears like fire breathes air, and seeing through themselves as signifiers of the downs that are capable of bringing the marvel resided within the human shapes up to higher ground. #12counts.

Good night, global citizens. I’ll see you around.


by Hung Hoang, '13

Spring One-Acts: Tech Dress!

This past Mondayʼs Tech Dress was an effective, yet extremely fun, showcase of the capabilities and progression of each member of the cast! As an audience member for the first two plays, “Small Actors” and “Itʼs Not You, Itʼs me”, I had the awesome opportunity to sit back and witness the early emergence of complete greatness in each show respectively. It was so fun to watch Pratima act like such a socially awkward teenage thespian in her play, to the point that I literally cringed in my seat, and to see Rebecca break poor, sweet little Jeffreyʼs heart over and over again in her play. But to be honest, I can not overemphasize how much fun it was to act out the “laugh out loud” hilarious, and sometimes even ridiculous, scenes as Actor 3 in Artistic Inspiration! I look forward to seeing all of these plays come into complete fruition within the next few days, and I have faith that each cast member will reach his or her full potential!

by Christiena Auguste, '14

Spring One-Acts: Load In!



Kennedy Alvarez checks to make
sure that the costumes are where
they need to be!
On Friday, the cast and crew of The Spring One-Acts began setting up the stage, the workshop, and greenroom for the show! The props and costumes crew, known as the "propstumes" or "crops" crew, labeled and arranged the costumes and props in their respective place. It was a lot of work, for the entire cast has certain clothing and other items that they must take with them on stage. The "propstumes" crew must make sure that every cast member has their costumes and props with them on stage.

ASM Carrie Babigian sets up the light
board on the stage managers' platform.
The stage managers and other cast members began to set up the platform from which the stage managers will be able to call light cues. Since the audience will sit on stage with the performers, the stage managers will need to be able to see the performance so that they can call the cues for the show. 
Liz Butler and Max Miller spike
furniture in the shop.

In the shop, Dom and a couple of us began to move the platforms out of the shop and onto the stage. While they were really heavy, we managed to move them! Meanwhile, some of us began to spike and arrange the furniture and larger props in the shop in order to make scene changes happen quicker and efficiently. Now that everything is out of the way, we are headed into Tech Week!

by Jeff Erazo, '15