As the final month of the year approaches, so do the finishing touches of The Importance, a show performed by the Ida B. Wells High School theater department, SouthWest Stageworks, as a part of the Teen West Program. The Importance is a piece of theatrical art written by playwright, Sarah Jean Accuardi, about the elements and relationship dynamics of high school theater productions.
Accuardi has many ties to the local Portland community. Her sister, Nicole Accuardi, is a teacher at DaVinci Middle School and her mother, Julie Accuardi, was a previous drama teacher at Ida B. Wells High School. Being the daughter of a high school drama teacher, Accuardi grew up in the IBW drama setting. Following in her mother’s footsteps she became a playwright, writing many pieces of work, one of which being The Importance. Due to her exposure to Southwest Stageworks in our school, Accuardi wrote the play replicating IBW’s drama room, allowing the IBW drama program to further put itself into the shoes of the characters.
As a whole, The Importance is a show written about the interactions and process it takes to create a high school theater production, more specifically in the fictional universe high school drama students are preparing for a show titled, The Importance of Being Earnest. Through numerous obstacles and relationship collisions, The Importance explores the intersection between group collaboration and the emotional effects of being in a production.
One character in the show, Vic, is an actor and student director in The Importance fictional universe, portrayed by Ian Lafrenz, a senior at IBW. “It’s definitely been a unique process in comparison to some other shows,” said Lafrenz, noting the first-ever teacher strike in Portland Public Schools (PPS) history which lasted from Nov. 1-20 causing education and access to the building access to halt while the Portland Association of Teachers and PPS bargained for a new contract.
“We weren’t really prepared to be working on the show for so long and having such a long break,” said Marissa Margolin, a junior who plays Riley in The Importance. “So getting back into things, still having dedication and commitment has been difficult.”
For theater students, the strike meant not having the security of knowing when they were going to rehearse or perform the show. “There is no element of the show that it has not affected,” said Jamie Miller, IBW’s drama teacher, as well as the producer and tech director of the show. “Not knowing from one day to the next what the next step would be is a rough place to be in.”
Miller has been working at IBW for 19 years as a teacher, mentor and producer for numerous productions over the years. His main job for productions is to ensure everyone has what they need to be successful, whether that is being a mentor to student designers or providing materials and logistical elements needed. In recent years, IBW’s drama program has aimed further into student-produced and run shows, with the help of Matt Zrebski who works with PlayWrights West and the Teen West Project to produce and direct new pieces of work for schools to perform. This is Zrebski’s 13th year working with original work with the Teen West project at IBW with SW². “He [Zrebski] is an expert-level artist in terms of bringing those works to life,” said Miller.
The Importance will open the Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m., and will run til Tuesday, December 12.
Lafrenz said, “It has something both for people who’ve performed and been in theater and for people who are outside of that and don’t really know anything about it and want to learn about that world in the way it actually works.”
