Harry Potter at Hoboken High School

 

[On the local evening newscast, News 4 New York at 11, of 14 May 2024 on WNBC, Channel 4 in New York City, I watched an account by reporter Checkey Beckford of the selection of Hoboken High School to be the first in the United States to present the high school version of the current Broadway hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  

[What I heard in the report interested me enough to do a little more checking.  Below is the result of my reading, and I think you’ll also find the story engaging.

[As most readers of Rick On Theater will know, I’m an avid supporter of arts in our schools, both as an activity and as an academic subject.  (I have taught both middle and high school theater, as well as college and even a few guest appearances in elementary classes.  I’ve also directed middle and high school productions and served as advisor to a high school theater group.)

[Past posts on ROT concerning theater and arts in schools (some of which cross over into another frequent topic I blog on: the censorship of artistic expression/the First Amendment and the arts) include “Degrading the Arts,” posted on 13 August 2009; “The Relation of Theater to Other Disciplines,” 21 July 2011; “Arts & Music Education,” 21 March 2014; “Arts in Schools,” 18 November 2015; “Musical Theater Programs for Kids,” 18 May 2018; “Music Theater Programs for Kids,” 5 February 2023; “Censorship on School Stages,” 30 July 2023; and “‘The Courage to Produce: A Conversation on High School Censorship,’” 21 April 2024.]

In November 2023, Broadway Licensing Global, the New York City-based rights-holder for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the current stage hit on Broadway and London’s West End, announced that the high school edition of the play is available for licensing (License Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (licensecursedchild.com)).  BLG held a contest, dubbed Wands at the Ready, to select the first schools in the United States to present the play. 

Entrants were asked to describe why their school or community is the most “magical” place to produce the début of the play in a U.S. state or territory.  High schools participating in the competition “should think of ‘magical’ as demonstrating how their school or drama program shows a passion for commitment to the arts, student inclusion and diversity,” the Broadway Licensing website suggested, “and ways they plan to promote the production within their communities.”

The competition ran until December 2023 and the performances would be staged between 15 October and 10 November 2024.  In February 2024, BLG announced that 29 schools from across the country had been selected to stage Cursed Child.  The locales stretched from Connecticut and Florida to California and Alaska—even a school in Puerto Rico gained the right to present the play. 

There was a school in New York, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Delaware . . . but none in New Jersey.  So how did Hoboken High School in Hudson County get the honor of being the first U.S. school to perform the play?  Well, the answer turns out to be quite simple. 

Hoboken High, along with one other secondary school in the United Kingdom, was chosen for a developmental pilot run of the new version of the play outside the Wands at the Ready competition.  Broadway Licensing went through a month of extensive searching and assessing of the applications of numerous schools to select Hoboken High School in the North Jersey region of the state (directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan), and Riverside School in Barking, a town in East London (Barking Riverside is a development within Barking).  

Riverside School, a state school, which is much like our public schools in that it’s tax-supported, presented its production of the play last 20-23 March.  Both schools selected are public or state institutions because BLG wanted to see that the script can be realized under a budget that isn’t supplemented by private endowments or subsidies. 

(The Wands at the Ready competition was open to all schools in the United States and its territories, including charter, private, and arts schools.  After the competition and the productions of the 29 chosen schools this fall, licenses will be available or all amateur productions.  Interested groups should check the BLG website to keep abreast of releases and updates regarding licensing

(The 29 schools from the Wands at the Ready competition still got to call their production “the first,” explained BLG and Sonia Friedman and Colin Callender, the professional play’s producers, irrespective of the pilot productions preceding them.  It was sort of like the Artist’s Proof of a print or lithograph not being counted in the official numbered run of the artwork—or, more appropriate, perhaps, the preview performances of a Broadway show that aren’t counted in the official length of the production’s run.)

Sometime in May 2023, Danielle Miller, the Fine and Performing Arts Supervisor for middle and high school on the Hoboken Board of Education, received an e-mail from BLG asking if the school was interested in being the U.S. pilot for the trial.  Evidently, she said yes.

The Hoboken Public School District has a very active theater program.  The district has three full-time, certified theater teachers and, says Miller in the WNBC news report, every student from kindergarten to 12th grade “gets a theater education.”

The district puts on an annual District Musical—this year, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which is characterized as a “play with music” but isn’t a musical, was performed instead of the musical—and all students in the district, from ages 5 to 18, are eligible to participate.  High schoolers play the adult characters (such as Harry, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, and other characters from the seven novels) and middle schoolers the other leads (Harry’s and Draco’s sons, and Ron’s daughters, for instance); creating the props and sets are the jobs of 6th to 12th graders.  

It was this diversity, equity, and inclusion that attracted BLG to Hoboken High as a potential pilot for Cursed Child.  Sean Cercone, founder and CEO of BLG, said that Hoboken was chosen for the North American pilot because “It’s the most diverse, loving, creative community we could have found, and it was right in our own backyard.”  The Hoboken community, including local businesses and residents, “really embraces the arts,” said Cercone.

As Miller is avid to point out, “Many of the most involved students, many who do the best in their classes, are all involved in theater.  It just teaches students to feel comfortable with who they are, to discover more things about themselves . . . .”  I’m not sure how much this means to the corporate rights-holders, but it’s a major point in my arguments for keeping the arts, including theater, in the schools.

The pilot productions were essential to ensure that each participating school could effectively convey the magic of the show within their budgetary and technical constraints.  Developed by the work’s original creative team, the school edition includes solutions that make the professional production’s high-tech wizardry possible regardless of a school’s budget size.

The pilot program was intended to set a high standard to reveal lessons for future productions in analogous circumstances.  Cercone said that “it was critical to us that we identify schools with facilities and resources most similar to the greatest number of schools worldwide.”  He continued, “These pilot productions are a learning process for us, to ensure that any school, regardless of its resources or budget, can produce this show with success.” 

Before I get to the High School Edition and Hoboken High’s production, let me run down the facts of the original play.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was written by playwright Jack Thorne (Let The Right One In, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, 2015; Christmas Carol, Broadway, 2019; King Kong musical, Broadway, 2020; also films and streaming) from an original story he wrote with J. K. Rowling and John Tiffany (who also directed the stage adaptation; Off-Broadway: Once, 2011; Broadway: Once, 2012; Macbeth, 2013; Glass Menagerie, 2013).  

The story’s set 19 years after the events of the 2007 novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last in Rowling‘s series about the young wizard.  (It’s essentially a sequel, since Deathly Hallows ends with an epilogue that’s set 19 years after the events of the episode showing Harry dropping his sons Albus and James off at the train for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.)  According to CNET, a computer website that’s affiliated with CBS International, the play “is officially the eighth story” in the Potter series.

The play follows Albus Potter and his friendship with Scorpius Malfoy, the son of Harry’s rival, Draco, in their first year at Hogwarts.  This friendship sparks a new journey for the older generation of the novels and their progeny—with the power to change the past and future forever.  There are spells, a race through time, and an epic battle to stop mysterious forces, all while the future of the Wizarding World hangs in the balance.

The world première production (which is still running) opened at the Palace Theatre in London’s West End on 30 July 2016.  It received 11 nominations for Laurence Olivier Awards in 2017 and won a record-breaking nine, including for Best New Play.  The Broadway production opened at the Lyric Theatre on 22 April 2018 and received 10 Tony Award nominations that year and won six, including Best Play.

The play was originally presented in two parts which theatergoers could attend in the afternoon and evening of the same day, or over two evenings.   After the pandemic shut-down, the Broadway production was restaged as a single, 3½-hour show in November 2021. 

In 2022, productions in San Francisco (December 2019-September 2022), Melbourne (February 2019-July 2023), Toronto (June 2022-July 2023), and Tokyo (in Japanese; July 2022-Present) also adopted the one-part format, and the German-language version in Hamburg (December 2021-Present) followed in 2023.  The West End production alone continues to play the original two-part version.

(Three upcoming productions have also been announced: Chicago, September 2024-February 2025; Los Angeles, February-June 2025; and Washington, D.C., July 2025-TBA.)

For the one-part version of Cursed Child, over 1½ hours of content was cut.  Also, while it’s not explicitly stated, Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy definitely exhibit romantic interest in each other, and other character relationships have been altered.  These changes have been incorporated in the two-part version of the play as well.

The high school edition of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was announced in September 2023.  According to the Broadway Licensing website:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child High School Edition is a special adaptation of the beloved worldwide hit.  Tailored for high school and secondary school theatre productions, it provides young actors the opportunity to play Harry, Hermione [Granger], Ron [Weasley], and all of their favorite characters on their very own stage and bring the wizarding world to life for their communities.  Your students will be empowered to conjure the magic through their own creativity, making it a truly exciting and engaging experience for students and audiences alike.

The Rowling Library, which isn’t affiliated with the Harry Potter author or any individual or company that’s engaged in the publishing or producing of the Potter books or films, asserts that “the high school version of the production has been condensed compared to its professional counterparts and incorporates innovative special effects adaptable to any school environment, irrespective of its lighting, sound, or stage infrastructure.”

I specifically went in search of some comment from BGL or the play’s producers regarding the school version’s adult or potentially controversial content, particularly the suggestion that Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy might be headed for a romantic relationship.  (It’s the subject of much Internet chatter, and the production’s been accused of “queerbaiting,” a marketing ploy in which creators hint at same-sex romance or other LGBTQ+ themes to entice an LGBTQ-friendly audience without explicitly depicting them.)

It was my experience, when choosing and staging middle and high school plays, that one of the first questions the principals and, most often, vice-principals asked in order to approve my selection was, ‘Is there any sex in it?’  Alongside religion, even the suggestion of sexual content was the topic that most likely would set off some parents.  The schools in which I worked were generally pretty liberal culturally, so I can’t but assume that the same concern would obtain in all the schools on BLG’s list.

I’d have expected there to have been some statement of assurance regarding controversial material in the script, but there was very little, and most of what I found was suggestive without being definitive and clear.  For instance, the Broadway Licensing site states that the school edition of the play is “tailored for high school theatre productions” without specifying what that addresses. 

The character description for Albus says that he “forms a close friendship with Scorpius Malfoy,” but leaves the implication ambiguous.  (There’s no parallel statement about Albus in Scorpius’s character profile.)

The high school version requires 16 men, 14 women, and 4 actors who may be any gender.  The play runs from 1½ to 2 hours (in contrast to the 3½ hours of the Broadway production.)  The script is adjusted for the standard stage lighting and sound capacities of typical public school theaters and auditoriums.  A perusal copy of the script is available for $20 from the license-holder (check their website, above).

(Broadway Licensing clearly states on its site that there are no restrictions on casting, including cross-gender casting: “Any student of any gender identity, race, etc. can play any role so long as the roles stay as written.”  See the FAQ’s on the webpage indicated above.)

Once Hoboken High was chosen, as revealed at a special event on 7 September 2023, Miller and her colleague, Jessica Fasolino, the Board of Ed’s Fine and Performing Arts Supervisor for kindergarten through 5th grade, sent out a district-wide announcement of the production schedule and procedures.

There was an audition registration period on the school’s website that ran until 17 November 2023, then the auditions themselves took place, grouped by grade, from 11 to 15 December.  There was even a “Mock Audition Fundraiser” on 9 December “to help prepare your child for the audition process.”  It sounded to me like a theater-games session for any student interested in trying out but who’d never participated before.

Miller reported that 300 to 350 Hoboken District students from kindergarteners to high school seniors auditioned for the play.  Of these, she assembled a cast of over 100 for the production.  This is apparently not uncommon for Hoboken’s inclusive program, and I gather it works for them.

(I’ve never had a cast that large, though I have swelled the companies for my middle school shows, as I imagine many secondary school theater teachers/directors do, but never more than 15% of that number.  My main question for Miller is: where do you put them all back stage?  I’ve never even seen a school theater, even where I did my MFA, whose back-stage area was exceptionally huge.)

Rehearsals started on 16 January 2024, with the final dress on Monday, 13 May.  At that session, Miller had arranged a surprise for the company that I’m sure was an immense thrill: the Broadway cast paid them an unannounced visit!  Following the rehearsal, reported BLG, the pros celebrated on stage with the students, giving high fives and sharing in the excitement.

(One of the benefits BLG and the professional show’s producers touted for selecting Riverside School in London and Hoboken High School in northern New Jersey for the pilot outings of the new adaptation of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was that both schools were in proximity to two important professional productions.  One might suspect they meant that this gave the young cast and potential audiences the opportunity to see the West End and Broadway mountings—but the surprise attendance by the Broadway actors might have been a lagniappe they, like the student actors and crew, hadn’t considered.)

At the same dress rehearsal, Miller invited faculty and theater students from other New Jersey school districts to provide “a platform for sharing experiences and fostering a sense of community among theatre educators and students alike.”  At the end, the guests, who in other circumstances—sports or academic competitions—might be rivals, the visitors’ Gryffindor to Hoboken’s Ravenclaw, stood and cheered their peers.

After a day off on Tuesday, the 14th, the second-ever production of the High School Edition of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the first in the U.S., opened at Hoboken High School on Wednesday, 15 May 2024.  It ran through Sunday, 19 May.  The Hoboken pilot showcase, like its U.K. predecessor, was sold out for all five performances.  In Hoboken, most of the seats were sold by Thursday.

Danielle Miller was the director of the Hoboken High staging of Cursed Child, but she teamed with theater teacher and stage director at the high school, Derek Kinnear, who served as technical director of the production.  Kinnear was responsible for, among other things, the magic and wizardly effects of Hoboken’s Cursed Child.

“Our challenge,” explains Miller, “was to innovate within the constraints of a well-known universe.”  Broadway Licensing repeatedly states that as long as the text is spoken the way it’s written (unless permission to make changes is obtained in writing), schools are allowed, even encouraged, to make adjustments in other aspects of the script, including casting, movement, or effects.  “We had to reimagine sets, costumes, props, and even the choreography of movements in a way that was fresh yet familiar,” Miller added.

The pilot shows were meant to establish the standards for schools around the world that will perform it afterwards.  Miller acknowledged that she and her team were “keenly aware of their responsibility not only to meet the standards associated with the franchise but also to showcase the potential of public school theater programs.”

Kinnear, the TD, observed, “We knew we didn’t want to try to copy the effects done on Broadway.”  So the tech team created “unique magical moments that were feasible within their budget,” and they added “little but precise effects” intended to engage the spectators without exceeding the school’s finances or taxing the team’s capabilities.

For example, Hoboken High’s Cursed Child put student actors into harnesses for flying and produced digital scenic projections.  From the photos I saw online, these effects looked as good and as convincing as any I’ve seen in Broadway and top-line rep company productions. 

“Our goal was to create a sense of wonder that was uniquely ours, without trying to replicate the high-budget effects of Broadway,” the tech director explained.  Kinnear and his techies apparently pulled it off.  Whatever his budget was, it seemed well spent. 

I was hoping that there’d be some kind of report of the performance, from audience members or a local journalist who followed up on all the pre-performance coverage of this singular occurrence.  I kept checking the ’Net after the 15th, but there wasn’t anything to speak of.  The only “after-action” record I found was on one blog, David Barrineau.

The eponymous blogger describes himself as “a Creative Director/Art Director for over two decades.  Most of my career has focused on Arts and Culture advertising, especially Theatre.”  He has a BFA in theater from New York University, and one of his advertising clients was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—the Broadway production, I presume.  Barrineau, who doesn’t seem to have any connection to the school, BLG, or the New York production, posted this reaction of opening night at the Hoboken High show:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Student Edition Premieres

May 15, 2024

The first student production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child premiered at Hoboken High School and it’s ADORABLE!  And the talented cast is so enthusiastic and charming.  The Broadway production is so technically stunning, I couldn’t imagine how they would be able to scale it down for student productions, but — wow!  There was so much creativity that went into the staging.  They even had a student fly on a broom across the stage, which the Broadway production doesn’t even do — maybe they should add it?

On the day after the London production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child premièred, the published text of the play was released.  (Note that the release date, 31 July 2016, corresponds to the birthdays of Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling—her 51st—and Harry, himself—his 36th.)  This is the script of the play, not a novelization, which has not been created.

There are two versions of the published script, released by Arthur A. Levine Books (an imprint of Scholastic Corporation, the U.S. publisher of the Potter novels).  The authorship credits are the same as for the play, itself: written by Jack Thorne from a story by Rowling, John Tiffany, and Thorne.  The first version is now labeled “Special Rehearsal Edition” and is the text of the play’s previews and early performances, and, like them, is in two parts.

A “Definitive Collector’s Edition” was published on 26 July 2017, and incorporated changes that were made in the text.  This edition is closer to the final version of the script as currently performed on stage.

(Note that these publications are the adult versions of the play text.  As of now, there is no commercially available published text of the high school edition.  Perusal copies, which are not complete acting editions—no stage directions, for example—are available for prospective licensees from BGL, and full acting editions will be available to licensees once the contracts have been signed.)

Just as no novel adaptation of the play is being contemplated, there is no film version of Cursed Child in the works at this time.

Rumors of a film adaptation began to circulate almost as soon as the play opened in London.  Warner Bros., the studio that produced all the Harry Potter films (and the related works that followed) has expressed interest in making a Cursed Child movie, especially if they can get the original actors who played the now-adult characters in the eight original films to reprise those roles now as adults—but so far Rowling, who must sign off on any adaptation of her work, has said no.

“[T]o set the record straight once and for all,” says Rowling: “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a stage play, it was conceived and written as a stage play, it was always intended to be a stage play and nothing else, and there are absolutely no plans for it to become a movie, a novel, a puppet show, a cartoon, a comic book series or Cursed Child on Ice.”

Of course, Rowling has said no on previous occasions . . . and later changed her mind.  As Fats Waller often said: “One never knows, do one?”