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The newly renovated auditorium and music rooms opened to students on Wednesday, Feb. 20. The original opening date was scheduled to be around Thanksgiving, but was pushed back to Jan. 20, and then finally to February.
“Nothing unexpected caused the delay; it was just that the work was behind schedule,” said principal Jay Pearson.
During the absence of the auditorium and practice rooms, those same departments had to compensate and practice in various locations unsuited for their art.
Before the completion of the new section, drama held class and rehearsed in the black-box room, the cafeteria and sometimes even the hallways. Orchestra and chorus, however, practiced and rehearsed in a row of old Academy classrooms and in the old wrestling room, which was less than ideal.
“It wasn’t designed acoustically for a music ensemble and we’ve had a hard time adjusting our sound to it,” said orchestra and piano lab teacher Catherine Bond.
Now that the auditorium is open, all of the performing arts classes have already taken over the space as their own.
The first performance inside the auditorium was that of the orchestra concert the day that the auditorium opened.
Meanwhile, the theater department holds practice for the upcoming musical Legally Blonde there every day and have been adjusting their equipment to fit the new storage space.
“We have to move into our new spaces and do a little spring cleaning on all the stuff we haven’t used,” theater teacher Jason Tamborini said.
Chorus classes are also making use of the new space, in preparation for their trip to New York in April.
“We sound a lot better when we practice [chorus] on stage. We sound more professional,” freshman Ally Ramella said.