Last Thursday night, the TABC Theater Department, in collaboration with Envision Theater, presented “Around the World in 80 Days,” a comedy by Marc Brown, adapted from the Jules Verne novel—to a sold out crowd. Last Friday, the cast gave an encore presentation to the student body and faculty.

This was the TABC Theater Department’s first full-length show since COVID shut down productions in March 2020, which means that only one actor in the cast had ever performed in a full-length play. This show was the stage-debut for five students who have never performed in a live show before. The behind-the-scenes staff grew as well and featured a student-director, a stage manager and an assistant stage manager—the largest team on a TABC production to date!

Beginning with auditions in September, the cast rehearsed four hours a week and more recently 15 hours a week on this challenging production. A comedy is much more difficult than a drama to perform as one must imagine the circumstances of the play as reality, even as they get more and more ridiculous, and play each scene with the utmost seriousness while raising the stakes as high as possible. These student-actors met each of these challenges in spades! Notably, this was also the final performance for graduating seniors Judah Belgrade, Akiva Schild, Shlomo Stobezki and Ariel Wallen, who have each grown tremendously as actors, student leaders and artists.

Under the guidance of Rebecca Lopkin, TABC’s director of Performing Arts, TABC’s drama department has expanded over the last seven years from a single after-school production into a robust performing arts department which offers two filmmaking courses as well as a public speaking course, school-wide trips to Broadway, field trips to live film sets and museums, participation in Envision Shakespeare and an interdisciplinary collaboration with the history department which culminates in TABC’s annual Bare Witness production. Next up is TABC’s Celebration of the Arts this spring!