Humans of East: Austin Housley

Senior Austin Housley has been involved with East theater throughout the past four years and discusses the challenges that have come this year with COVID-19 regarding Frequent Fridays and the annual musical: “Godspell.”

Can you describe your involvement with East theater?

“I started in East theater with the drama class, which is the first of the four classes you need to take to get a Frequent Friday, and then on top of that I was doing the musical revue and the musical, which are both considered extracurriculars but are still the East theater department. I just stuck through with that the past four years. I’ve done one fall play, but other than that it’s just been choir, the Frequent Friday classes and then the extracurricular performances that they put on.”

What will your Frequent Friday be and how will you prepare for it?

“My show is called ‘Gloria Mundi.’ I chose it last year, and it’s one of those shows that makes you kind of question reality a little bit where not everything is as it seems. It’s set in a mental hospital and it has some funny aspects to it, but it overall has more of a dramatic feel to it. My auditions are going to be some time in March, hopefully towards the later part of March because I’ll have Godspell up until then. It’s going to be good — it’s kind of minimal, but something that I think people will be interested in and will enjoy once the ending and conclusion comes out.”

How is the musical and rehearsal process structured this year?

“In a usual musical audition process, we would start with vocal auditions and sing something from any musical that fits the style of the show. Then we would do dance callbacks a separate day, and then actual callbacks for parts, which is when the directors want to hear you again, and know the cast list by the end of the week. But this year, we got a select eight songs that we had to sing from the show that replaced callbacks. Dancing was optional this year, which was also unusual. We were actually assigned our parts in-person in front of the cast the following week, which is a longer timeline than normal.”

How has COVID-19 impacted East theater this year?

“I think theater all around the world, but especially the Shawnee Mission district, definitely got the short end of the stick because theater is not technically considered a KSHSAA-sanctioned event, and neither is choir. That kind of posed a lot of problems just because we technically weren’t allowed to rehearse, we weren’t allowed to meet, we weren’t allowed to put any performances on — all while sports were practicing and playing games. It wasn’t until November or December when they really started recognizing theater and choir as sports or as KSHSAA-sanctioned events.”

How has being online affected your theater classes?

“Well, the main point of your senior year Advanced Rep. class is built around doing a Frequent Friday. Being virtual, obviously, we haven’t been able to meet to do auditions or actually rehearse or anything like that. For a while, first semester, we were just saying [to] not do Frequent Fridays this year and figure something else out. But once we got the announcement for hybrid for second semester, we kind of decided that we could most likely fit everyone in in a decent amount of time as long as we stay hybrid. So definitely being virtual poses those kinds of challenges.”

Is there a certain aspect of SME theater that you’re looking forward to for the rest of the year?

“I really hope that as long as we’re staying hybrid that our Frequent Fridays can stay on because it’s really important to me that that happens this year because it’s something that I’ve been working for since freshman year. I got into the theater classes to be able to do a Frequent Friday and put that on my senior year, and so the thought that I wasn’t going to be able to do that was really upsetting. I’m hoping we can stay in hybrid long enough [for my Frequent Friday] and Godspell too.”