Similar to prestigious award shows like the Tony Awards or the Emmys, the Cappies are awarded to high school students involved with theatre. At the end of a school year, everyone nominated for an award in their district will show up to attend the Cappies Gala. This year, Woodgrove’s district will have its gala at the Kennedy Center, where actors, actresses, singers, dancers, theatre tech students, producers, and even critics can earn awards for their efforts in theatre.
One crucial part of the Cappies are the critics. Without critics, the Cappies would not be able to distribute awards. Every school that participates in the Cappies has a group of critics that they will send to see other schools’ Cappies shows and write reviews. Woodgrove has nine Cappies Critics that work together to attend shows, talk about the shows, and write reviews. To become a critic, there is an application process. This application helps the Lead Critic to be able to decide who they want to join their critic team based on writing skill, transportation availability, and previous theatre background and knowledge.
Cappies Critics have leaders, just as many sports and other activities do. Rory Fricano, a senior, is the current Lead Critic for the team at Woodgrove. This is her first year as a Critic. One of the responsibilities of Lead Critic is to help edit and critique the reviews that the other critics have made, while also working on her own reviews. “A lot of times before deadlines, my critics will send me a Google Doc of their review, and I will go through and I will help them trim it down or fix a few words. You have to work a lot on your own writing, but you also have to work on everybody else’s,” Fricano explained.
The Lead Critic is supported by her team of critics, who write reviews and attend shows with her. Critic Kylie Sharpe, a junior, said she became a critic after she was referred to by name in a review she had received last year for “Elf.” She explained, “There was one person that mentioned me and one of the other actors, and I was just like ‘That’s great, my year is set.’” During her first year of being a critic, Sharpe has had positive experiences with the shows she has seen and with her teammates. “It’s super positive, and you definitely need to have a tight knit feeling with your team,” she noted.
Critic Sarafina Porter, a junior, has been involved with theatre at Woodgrove during her student career. “I do theatre here at Woodgrove, and the opportunity opened up for me to do it,” she explained. Porter likes being a critic for many reasons, like meeting new people and seeing shows. “I like it because you get to bond with other Cappies Critics and talk to critics in other schools and potentially make friends with other people from other schools. It’s also a really good way to improve your writing,” she stated.
Critic Lauren Pyles, a junior and an active participant in theatre, decided it would be fun to be a critic and see another side of the Cappies. “I’ve been in every Cappies show that I’ve been able to be in…Rory [Fricano] sent out a form to us…I wrote a little ‘I love theatre, pick me, choose me, love me,’” she shared. Pyles said her motivation to join Cappies Critics was being to the Cappies Gala before and seeing the work of the critics, making her want to help out. She said, “I’ve been to the Cappies Gala, we see the results of what critics do, so being able to have a say in who wins is such a big deal.”
This brings us to the “swing,” in theatre terms, of the team: junior Maggie Bugaj. Bugaj is the alternate for the critic team. In case anyone gets sick, she is ready to step in and take their place to go review and keep up Woodgrove’s reputation. Bugaj shared her experience when she applied to be a critic, saying, “When I applied I wrote a paragraph, and then I did a tap dance for Rory [Fricano].” Bugaj does not just hang out around the team though. Sometimes, she will help edit things for Fricano and the rest of the team. “If someone were to write their review at midnight after the show, I could look at it and go, ‘There’s 15 different errors and grammatical errors, here’s how you could look less biased.’ That’s kind of cool just having the opportunity to do that,” Bugaj explained.
When the day comes for the critics to attend a show to be critiqued, they will often arrive well before the show starts and enter the room that is specifically for the Cappies Critics to use. Inside this room, there will be tri-fold boards made by the tech crew for the show. Many times, these boards will give information on what the tech crew did behind the scenes that may be harder to judge from the stage. “As lead critic you would take notes about these…Let’s say I would be assigned costumes and lights and so I would tell everyone…‘For costumes they did this and this and this, and that’s interesting because of this and this and this. And for lights they did this and this’ and so on,” Fricano shared.
During intermission and then again after the show, critics will meet together to discuss what they had seen in the show. This is a very important step in the process, as anything that was not talked about in the after-show discussion is not allowed to be written about in their review of the show. After they have finished talking about their thoughts on the show, they will discuss which actors and tech crew will be nominated for Cappies awards. When they are done, they finally journey back home where critics will either have a long night or an early morning of writing to meet their deadline.
As Woodgrove is nearing the opening date for “Mamma Mia!,” its Cappies show, it is important to appreciate and understand all that the Cappies Critics do for Woodgrove and the other schools in the district. “If you like seeing shows, or you want to start seeing shows…It’s a good opportunity to open up to other things,” said Fricano.