The Road To Opening Night: Step Three, Casting Friendships

Special to Emmaus Patch By Chrissy Cilento, Emmaus High School Junior

With only two rehearsals left before Guys and Dolls opens, everyone involved is starting to feel a tad bit stressed. This is the time of the rehearsal process when tensions run high, sleep is a word we’re not familiar with, and we all begin to count down the hours until we get our lives back.

Though right now it seems like the end of the show will lift a gigantic weight off our shoulders, I know we’re all at least a little bit sad to see the show go. Everyone in the cast agrees that the end of the show is bittersweet. Junior Tim Farabaugh sums it up nicely: “After the show it’s like ‘Oh... I get to go home now.’ ” Home seems to be a place that we go only to sleep for the last couple of rehearsals leading up to the show. Although it’s definitely going to be nice to have some down time after Guys and Dolls ends, Tim’s right: there’s something about walking out of school at the end of the day, completely bypassing the auditorium, that just seems foreign. 

The connections created within the show are really what makes everyone miss it once it’s gone. After spending three months and hundreds of hours with the same exact people every single day, it’s hard to let the friendships created go. There’s a sort of bond in rehearsal that can’t really be found during the school day. As cliche and cheesy as it may seem, throughout the course of Guys and Dolls, we’ve all become a family. Sometimes we fight and butt heads, but in the end we’re always there to support each other. I can honestly say that I have never met a person who has not made at least one friend while doing the shows at Emmaus. 

More than friendships have arisen from Guys and Dolls, though. As the flowers budded this spring, so did romance. Within the cast and crew, relationships formed and several prom dates were found. The Drama Department is almost like its own mini Match.com. After all, we’re drama people: matchmaking is our second calling. 

Years and years from now, when everyone in Guys and Dolls is old and gray, we’re not going to remember our lines, choreography, and cues from the show. We may not remember the brutal costume changes or how late we went to bed the nights leading up to the show. The memories that won’t disappear, though, are those of the friendships and bonds created in the show, all the laughs and smiles shared between each person involved. Even though Guys and Dolls will be over by next weekend, the camaraderie between all the people involved won’t ever truly end. 

Chrissy Cilento, a junior at , plans to study journalism in college. She is a periodic contributor to Patch.