The students who put together the production of “Almost, Maine” at Glenwood Springs High School have put in countless hours to bring the community a completely student-led and run production. 

After doing a couple scenes from “Almost, Maine” during their sophomore year, a group of this year’s seniors decided to do the full production of the play as their opener for the season. 

Everything from light production to sound creation, managing and directing peers, along with deciding how they specifically want to portray the scenes were all done solely by students. 

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Seniors Sage Kelly and Ashley Brennan were the two directors of the play, making this their senior capstone project. 

Capstones are senior projects that every student is required to fulfill in order to graduate. It’s a “passion” project of their choosing that requires 30 hours of work to complete. 

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“We well exceed those 30-hour requirements,” Kelly said. “We put probably upwards of 100 into this already.” 

The play is a collection of separate stories that are all placed in “Almost, Maine.” Each scene simultaneously tells a different tale on a cloudless winter night with each plot ending with a sighting of the northern lights.

The play was chosen, as to not be too complex for overall production, but the Northern Lights were an interesting concept for the students to create on stage, and Brennan worked hard to perfect them. 

The play is completely unrestrained creative expression and collaboration from the students who participated. They were able to learn life skills like delegating work and balancing constructive criticism and creating something new when they can’t find it elsewhere, like creating sounds because most sound clips are copyrighted. 

“The biggest learning curve here is learning how to have a bunch of people, but how to delegate those tasks,” Kelly said. 

The two directors covered most everything, divvying up the work between themselves. Brennan, who plans to go to college for computer science, took on a lot of the tech work, like creating sound effects, lighting and training crew members, along with directing. 

Kelly, who plans to go to college to be a civil engineer,  took on some of the more creative roles like designing posters and programs, and deciding on props and set pieces. While also directing aspects like tone, emotion, motivation and overall direction of the scene. 

“They seemed to have a perfect balance,” said senior student Skye McConaughty. 

After tireless work, and daily hours spent getting the production together, the students are excited and proud of their hard work. 

“The lights make very good silhouettes at the end of every scene,” said sophmore Charlie Hippensteel.

The directors are not the only hard working talent in the production, the cast is exceptional as well. 

“We have an amazing cast,” Kelley said. “Honestly, watching them on stage blows me away every time. I just sit here and look at my cast and sometimes wonder how are we teenagers? Yeah, because some of them are so talented.”