Gravette School District

Last spring, Gravette High School Theater shattered expectations for what a school production could be. The show was unconventional, experimental, and fearless. But for those involved, it was a story that waited years to be told. As the Performing Arts Center prepares for their 2025 fall debut (Nov. 8–9), that same resilient, risk-taking energy still drives the work. The story of Alice is not over. Its long, troubled journey to the stage is channeled directly into a central theme for this fall's production.

Unfinished Business

When audiences arrived at the PAC last spring, many needed a moment to comprehend what they were seeing. A platform stretched into the front rows, expanding the performance space to mere inches from the seats, while the Queen’s towering throne anchored the center stage in menace. An array of projectors cast moving animations and prerecorded scenes across the walls, enveloping the entire room in shifting light and sound. Thick vines and fabric streams hung from the rafters, and at the rear of the theater, an enormous mushroom loomed imposingly behind the final row of seats.

“The movement of the show going all around the PAC helped the message,” said senior Aiden Heaton, who played the Mad Hatter and designed the LED displays, “It shows the progression of Alice through the performance, by moving her along the building as she learns more about herself.”

The sounds of Wonderland were just as carefully crafted as its physical space. Every note of the soundtrack, from the flutes, clarinets, harmonium, and electric bass, came from the hands and breath of Gravette musicians. Their layered performances blended precision with imperfection, heightening the dreamlike tension and mirroring Alice’s struggle for normalcy. The production featured a full original score with songs drawn from Lewis Carroll’s poems and an anthem, Be What You Would Seem to Be, composed by student Kaiden Walls. Senior Ashlynd Allen-Rodriguez, working alongside Choir Director Amy Hartsell, built a soundscape that could shift from chaos to reflection in an instant. “I wanted to pull direct lines from the script,” Walls said, “and create a song that made no sense on the surface but carried real meaning underneath.”

The same vision ran through everything, score, sets, design. It was all fueled by Theater Director Ian Galloway’s strong sense of unfinished business. After stepping away from the program for a few years to build the school's film department, Galloway returned to the director’s chair last fall. That meant he could finally tackle the show that was originally conceived in his first year in the role, designed for the spring of 2020. Back then, the sets were constructed, chairs were removed, and Wonderland had started to take shape. But just two weeks before opening, the COVID-19 shutdown forced its cancellation. The show never opened, and Galloway spent that spring dismantling the set alone. “It was really a tragic day,” said Mr. Galloway. “So coming back to this program, I had to get it out of my system.”

A Wonderland of Its Own

Each corner of Wonderland represented a different stage of Alice’s mind. “The show was all about discovering yourself through introspection,” said senior Aiden Heaton. “The Hatter represented old age and the madness that comes with loss, the March Hare represented adolescence, and the Dormouse represented infancy and creative innocence.”

Senior Faith Croxdale, who played the Dormouse, said the story’s chaos was intentional. “The show isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s supposed to make you think,” she explained. “There’s no such thing as normal... Everyone has a mad side. ”

That hidden meaning shaped the design as well. Senior Reece Murray, who portrayed the Knave of Hearts, led costume design and painted much of the Seaside wall herself. “Every piece had meaning,” Murray said. “The Hearts family needed to look regal but unified, the Tea Party costumes showed the aging of Alice’s mind, and the Gryphon and Mock Turtle showed elegance and sorrow.” She described the experience as “insanely weird and silly, but strangely home.”

At the center was Alice, played by senior Autumn Ellis, who saw Wonderland as a metaphor for self-acceptance. “By the end,” Ellis explained, “[Alice] becomes more confident in who she is and what she wants, even if the path there doesn’t make sense.” Ellis shared that the role changed how she saw herself too. “You shouldn’t worry so much about what others think,” she said.

The play’s emotional turning point came in the seaside scene between Alice, the Mock Turtle, and the Gryphon. With special effects stripped away, the cast delivered a quiet moment of emotion that felt earned. “Every time we reached that scene in rehearsal,” said Galloway, “there was an electricity in the room. It was honest. That’s when I knew we’d found something real.”

The show wrapped up with a final song and dance featuring every member of the cast. The number blended the chaos with a lingering sense of understanding, closing the loop on Alice’s journey. Each performer represented a fragment of her mind coming together as one, joy, guilt, power, defiance, fear, curiosity, all moving in rhythm before dissolving back into silence.

The Price of Ambition

Last year’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was a whirlwind of bewildering spectacle that didn’t just break the fourth wall, it obliterated every shred of it and refused to acknowledge it ever existed. The story unfolded across the entire floor, walls, and ceiling of the PAC. Students built bespoke worlds in every corner of the stage and auditorium, filled the air with sounds directly from their own imaginations, and invited the audience to participate in a living performance. It was, without a doubt, the most ambitious show ever staged at Gravette High School.

Unbridled exploration of technology and design for self-expression isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. While many audience members were blown away, some felt confused by the ambitious elements. “Not all art needs to be for everyone,” Galloway said. “It’s okay for an audience to struggle. That’s what real art does, it makes you feel something new.”

The Community's Mandate

Gravette Theater doesn’t stop. Their next challenge is nothing less than the cornerstone of dramatic storytelling, Hamlet. But this isn’t Shakespeare as we know it. Hamlet Thrill-Ma-Geddon transforms the classic into an irreverent satire… and the program’s relatable struggles into comedy.

The story follows students with shoestring budgets who hire a shady consultant, skewering the pressure to please audiences and secure funding. One scene even has actors rewriting historically significant dialogue mid-performance to advertise a fictional pharmaceutical sponsor. The jokes are so good it's a palpable struggle for the cast to get through rehearsals without breaking into laughter. They’re dragging the prince into the present kicking and screaming, reshaping tragedy into slapstick comedy, and making reinvention a new tradition.

The fall show is this season's must-see community event. It’s Gravette's chance to see what this team can do next. Let's pack the house, not just to show that Lion Pride, but to be part of an unforgettable, wildly entertaining show. You don't want to miss it this time.

Fall Play GHS Drama presents: The Hamlet Thrill-Ma-Geddon