Archer’s upper school theater program debuted an original production, “Fall into the Stars,” written and directed by teacher Tracy Poverstein. It debuted on March 13 and was inspired by Archer’s historical role as a women’s retirement home.
The cast performed five shows in the Meridith Baer Black Box Theater: a faculty show and the first official performance March 13, one performance March 14 and two more March 15.
The story follows a group of sixth-grade students who come to the theater for class on their first day of school. The young students are excited until they realize they are not alone in the theater — they are sharing the space with the ghosts of women who lived in the Eastern Star Home.
The idea for the play came from unexplained events Poverstein experienced in the theater. When she first started working at Archer, she noticed lights would sometimes go out randomly, items would fall unprompted and the steel door of her office would often open and slam by itself.
“We just felt like there was a presence in the building,” Poverstein said. “I would tell my husband about the strange things that happened, and he was like, ‘That would make a good play, you should write about that.’ So I started thinking about what their stories could be.”
Unlike typical productions that rely on licensed scripts, “Fall Into the Stars” was able to adapt alongside the actors who played each character. Many students enjoyed the collaborative nature of this process, like sophomore Maya Sakhnini who played a sixth grader named Sarah.
“Sarah is like a wrecking ball of nervousness — she’s very anxious, and she’s very gullible in a way that she’ll believe anything people tell her,” Sakhnini said. “This is the first production I’ve been in that was an original work, and it’s been really cool to rehearse in this process and also add our own things. A few of the jokes that have been added in were our own, and Ms. Pov was like, ‘I like that, let’s add that to the script.’ I think that’s a cool element and something that we haven’t really done before.”
Poverstein enjoyed letting students improv to further develop the script.
“When you are working on a new piece and you’re still workshopping it, it’s in process and that’s part of the fun of working with the actors.” Poverstein said “A lot of the students came up with lines and Hayden came up with some really funny lines for her character that ended up making it into the script.”
Although Poverstein knew she wanted to include ghosts of women throughout different periods in history as one of the main elements of the story, she wasn’t sure how to incorporate students from an all-girls school in the story.
“I took the stories and was like, ‘How do we weave in the storytelling element of the girls school?’” Poverstein said. “And then, in the fall, we did some more workshopping on the vignettes and did some rewrites, and I got notes from people. My husband did rewrites, and then we went into rehearsal and did more rewrites.”
Developing the play came with challenges, especially after losing two weeks of rehearsal due to fires. Freshman Camille Chi played a sixth grader named Michaela, and she said putting the play together was stressful, especially with the limited time they had.
“We didn’t have that much time to really think about how we want to embody and to play our characters,” Chi said. “I think that was one of the biggest challenges.”
The production came together in the end, with a script that kept the audience constantly laughing and even crying. Visually, the set was deeply connected to Archer’s history, featuring a busy arrangement of new objects and real artifacts left behind by the ladies of the Eastern Star.
“When the ladies of the Eastern Star would move into the home, I think part of the deal was all your belongings belonged to them,” Poverstein said. “So some of the suitcases and things on the set, I think, actually belonged to those women. I remember finding a card table once with a name on the bottom of it, and it said 1935. We used, and still use, some of these objects for props.”
Chi said the set evoked memories of past productions for her. There were costume racks with dresses from “Mamma Mia” and “Frozen,” which was a while ago. She and Sakhnini agreed that their favorite part of the set was that they kept finding new elements they hadn’t seen before.
“Every night, when we were doing scenes, I went the set and would find something new every time,” Sakhnini said. “It’s like a treasure box, but it keeps revealing more floors, and you see more stuff.”
Senior Hayden Seid appreciated all the Archer “Easter eggs” that were included in the production such as references to Archer’s teaching methods, and friendly rivalry with Immaculate Heart.
“Ms. Pov really centered it around the important stories of women throughout history and Archer’s history,” Seid said. “I love the way it honors their stories and also our school.”
Cast members resonated with the messages of resilience and hope in the play. Seid hopes viewers are left with the confidence to pursue their dreams and find opportunities in moments or uncertainty.
“Things may not turn out exactly as planned, but it’s going to be okay, and something better may come out of it,” Poverstein said. “It’s not all about us — we have roles in other people’s lives that are really important, and for women especially in this time in history, sometimes it feels like we’re going backwards. It’s really important to see how far we’ve come so that we have the inspiration to keep fighting.”
