As the season winds down and students prepare to begin the new 2025 academic year, Staples Players begins preparation for a different kind of year. For the first time in a long time, Players will be running two major shows at the same time; “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” at Staples, and a play adaptation of the novel “A Wrinkle in Time” at Toquet Hall.
“The fall show is always so big, it involves probably over 100 kids,” Staples Players Director David Roth said. “It’s usually a really big set, a really big cast, a really big crew, all of that stuff. In the last couple of years we’ve discovered that doing a second really big show after that is really burning people out.”
Student actors are having mixed reactions about taking on two major shows, but they are willing to take it head on nevertheless.
“This has been out of the blue,” Players actor Gavin Jimali ’27 said.
This particular show model has been used in the past, specifically pre-Covid, but that didn’t make the switch back any less surprising to the student body.
The prospect of two major shows has also created opportunity within the whole community with Staples Alum Gina Rattan, a previous Players President and Assistant Director, taking on directing “A Wrinkle in Time” with students that choose to participate.
“I love the story,” Roth said. “Before I became a teacher here, I was a fifth grade teacher, and I loved teaching ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ [to] fifth grade.”
It’s a smaller show in terms of the cast size and set, but its prospects are anything but. The visuals will feature a thoughtful ensemble that creates roles that are unorthodox in comparison to the novel, but well accentuate the workings of a stage production and character study.
Putnam, on the other hand, is a raunchier, less introspective production that includes more outlandish elements, such as audience participation and actor improvisation.
“A crazy fun character-driven show,” Players Stage Manager Fin Maddaloni ’26, who’s chosen to work on Spelling Bee, said. “It’s on the shorter side, but still has a great story and really strong music.”
Though it’s been a while since they’ve utilized this production format, Players is clearly ready to take on this challenge.
“It’s definitely new,” Maddaloni said. “But our cast and crew are extremely talented and more than ready to take on two productions at once.”
