On Friday, Oct. 19, and Saturday, Oct. 20, the 18th annual Hogwarts at Hamilton took place in Benedict Hall. All shows were free and open to the public, with family-friendly tours beginning at 5:00, 6:00, and 8:00 PM on Friday, and at 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, and 8:00 PM on Saturday. Adult performances also took place on Friday and Saturday at 9:30 and 10:30 PM. Most Hamilton students are unaware of the work that goes into pulling off such a performance. As a cast member, I had a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to stage this hallmark event.
Auditions took place in early September in three stages. First, a group audition took place for anyone who wanted to audition. Everyone stood in the center of the Barn while E-board members watched from the upstairs balcony and shouted situations for us to act out. Some examples of these scenarios are to be “obliviated,” to vomit slugs, or to be a spider on roller-skates.
After the group audition, everyone split up into smaller groups with an E-board member who led more individualized auditions. For example, in one exercise, each member from my group chose a Harry Potter character to act out, while I went away so I would not hear. When I came back, I had to ask each member questions until I figured out which character they were portraying. For the third part of the audition, everyone gathered in a circle in the Barn and improvised different scenarios from Harry Potter.
The next day, the cast list was released and everyone who was selected was organized into groups by classroom. The four main classrooms this year were Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA), Potions, and Muggle Studies. We also included a Hogwarts teacher’s lounge and Hogwarts student common room. Additionally, four students were chosen to be tour guides to represent the four Hogwarts houses: Ravenclaw’s Grey Lady (Bria Dox ’22), Gryffindor’s Nearly Headless Nick (Salma Alaoui ’22), Hufflepuff’s Fat Friar (Kat Gardilcic ’22), and Slytherin’s Bloody Baron (Isabel Bates ’21). I was cast as Angelina Johnson and placed in DADA, led by E-Board members Andy Letai ’19 (as Gilderoy Lockhart) and Theo Golden ’20 (as Goyle). Our group met every Monday night from 10:15 to 11:15 PM in KJ 102 until the week of the performance.
In the first couple rehearsals, we brainstormed ideas for the family-friendly show and improvised different scenarios to find out which jokes worked best. Every classroom made sure to include the children from the audience
in their skits. In DADA, we had three duels. Two of the duels involved kids from the audience dueling against Susan Bones (Dianne-Lee Ferguson ’22) and Hannah Abbott (Sarya Khandare ’22). After finishing the storyline for the family-friendly show, we started to brainstorm ideas for the adult show. The part of this process that was the most fun was conceptualizing creative ways to incorporate Hamilton’s many inside jokes into the skit. In DADA specifically, Gilderoy attended the “Warlocka Flocka Flame Concert,” “Filch Coots” took away Crabbe (Lizzy Egey ’19), and Goyle’s pet snake Nagini and Lee Jordan (Clara Kohrman ’21) got norovirus from the house elves.
On Thursday, Oct. 18, the day before our first show, all of the “classrooms” met in the Annex for a dress rehearsal and to go over the logistics of the performance. Everyone who played a Hogwarts student was provided with a wand, a cloak, and a tie that matched their house colors. The schedule worked out so that each classroom would perform four shows every hour with breaks in between, allowing the cast members to watch the other classroom skits. On Friday, everyone arrived an hour before the first show to help decorate and transform the ordinary Hamilton classrooms into magical Hogwarts classrooms.
Not only was Hogwarts at Hamilton a fun way for students to live out their Hogwarts fantasies, but the club also raised $300 for the Kirkland Township Library. If anyone is interested in more Harry Potter themed events, the E-Board will be hosting their annual Yule Ball on Saturday, Dec. 1.
