After a two-year musical hiatus, the Carroll Theatre department made an exciting return to the stage last month when it performed “Elf: The Musical” leading in to the holiday season. As the department’s talented actors, performers and tech students look ahead in anticipation of new shows in the spring, Carroll Theatre director Jamie Pringle reflects on how far the program has come and what the future has in store for her and her students.
I HAVE… been a theater kid my whole life. Some of my first memories are listening to Disney records in my room and acting out all the roles. After receiving my bachelor’s in theater performance, I began working professionally and toured the U.S. with Dallas Summer Musicals and Dallas Children’s Theater. I have also performed on the most professional stages in DFW, including Bass Hall, Lyric Stage, Casa Mañana.
THIS IS MY… 25th year as a high school theater teacher. I came to Carroll Senior High School seven years ago and have enjoyed working with the talented students and staff in Southlake. My husband Greg Dulcie currently works at Carroll High School as a paraprofessional, and we are parents to a sixth-grade Dragon named Finley.
THERE WERE A LOT… of questions early on in the pandemic about whether theater will survive and come back after it’s all said and done. I think we can take a deep breath and confidently say that theater has come back and will continue to be one of the most essential art forms of all time. I’ve dedicated my whole life to theater, and I’m grateful to be able to continue sharing that with all of our students.
DURING LAST YEAR… we did two shows over Zoom, as well as an outdoor performance and a one-act play for UIL while we wore masks. For a lot of the kids, it was the only real human interaction they had throughout the day.
I THINK THE THING WE’VE MISSED MOST… is the experience of being in front of a live audience. You can always see and hear the audience and know they’re being moved by the production, whether they’re laughing or crying. Being away from that for two years is really hard on performers — especially for our kids.
WE WERE BEYOND EXCITED AND RELIEVED… to be back in our regular theater once again this fall. To not do anything on Zoom this year has felt so wonderful to us all. MUSICALS HAVE ALWAYS… been exciting for us. It’s the one time of the year where we’re working not just with theater but also with our choir directors and jazz orchestra. It’s kind of a big extravaganza of fine arts.
A LOT OF OUR THEATER KIDS… are also choir kids, so that collaboration between those departments work really well for us. Theater is a team sport, and it takes many people working together to put it on.
WE CHOSE TO DO ‘ELF’... because we were looking for something to kick off the holidays and show off the new facilities in a really happy and fun show. It was the full-length, two-hour musical, the same one you’d see in New York if you went to Broadway or the West End.
OUR ENTIRE BACKSTAGE AREA… was completely renovated. We have a new set shop that is four times as big as what we had before. We have new dressing rooms, a new costume lab and a new 125-seat black box theater that we used for our last show, ‘Book of Liz,’ in September. My technical director, Ryan Barbe, also did projected scenery of snowflakes and Christmas lights for the show as well. That was a first for us both.
WE HAD… 60 people work on this production, including seven adult staff members. It’s a big undertaking to put a show together and manage all of the moving pieces, from the set design to the orchestra to the costumes to the actors to the technicians to the people working in front of the house. To have all of that synthesize and come together into this production is kind of a Christmas miracle.