Maharishi School speech team to perform this weekend

The Maharishi School speech team will perform three times for the public this weekend at Spayde Theater.

The performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday. Spayde Theater is in Maharishi University of Management's library. Tickets are $8 for students, staff and faculty, and $10 for the general public.

The students will perform the acts they did at the district and state speech competitions, as well as the individual performances they've been working on. Of the school's nine individual acts, four will be going to the state competition March 9 in Eldridge.

The young thespians are under the direction of Jan Thatcher, who has helped with the speech team for 25 years, often with costume and design. Thatcher said it is such a pleasure to see students mature throughout their careers and even from week to week. She mentioned that one student was so shy at the beginning of the year that she went into a panic attack on the second day of practice. Thatcher worked with her to calm her nerves and now she is delivering her lines with poise and confidence.

Thatcher also mentioned that several students are performing in their second language, no doubt an extra challenge.

Junior Neethu Yannanur is in a couple of productions, an individual piece touching on misunderstandings and love, and a group mime with two fellow juniors, Sophia Malik and Chase Winer, and freshman Adel Cynolter. She said the individual piece is the most challenging because she's had less time to prepare for it, just a matter of weeks compared to her group mime, which she's rehearsed for four months. Malik added that individual performances tend to be harder because there's less room for error.

This mime act is called 'Wallflower Row,” and is about a group of girls at a high school dance. Yannanur plays the 'belle of the ball,” the popular girl everybody else wants to be. The girls dance with imaginary partners, some of whom, like Sophia's partner, are comically tall. The students had to hone their miming skills to make the audience believe they were draping their arm around a real person and not empty air. Yannanur said the key to miming is demonstrating the weight of every fictitious object.

Maharishi School students received all 'I”s on their large group speech acts at both districts and state. Sadly, they will not be able to perform one of them this weekend because of copyright laws. That's their musical theater 'Honk!” the story of the ugly duckling. Thatcher spoke to the company that owns the musical's publishing rights, and it wanted $150 for each public performance, a price too steep for a small high school to afford. (Editor's note: On top of that, the owners do not allow the musical to be edited for time. Upon securing the rights to perform it, it must be performed in full.)

Nevertheless, the students were exceptionally proud of the musical, which they had to condense into 10 minutes. Malik said that, despite the time limit, the plot of the musical comes through nicely in the four songs they chose from it and the little bits of spoken word connecting each.

For her individual performance, Winer is singing the song 'Mister Snow” from the musical 'Carousel.” It was one she chose herself after hearing it during her singing lessons with Pat Crim. Winer has been taking singing lessons since middle school.

Malik said she is so thrilled to be acting in productions at Maharishi School. Before this year, she attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where she majored in vocal music. Standing out from the crowd was difficult in a school full of Broadway-bound students, and Malik never even bothered to try out for the school musicals.

'Teachers never noticed me. I was just another shy girl not singing to my potential,” she said.

Her attitude has done a complete 180 since arriving in Fairfield, and now she's gaining confidence in her voice.

'Participating in speech has helped me explore musical theater,” she said. 'I never saw music as a career, but now I want to pursue it.”