There’s magic in the air this weekend as Wilton High School Theater becomes the first high school in Connecticut to offer a production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
While the show is already sold out for tonight’s opening night, people still have a chance to get tickets to three other performances this weekend of a show that students have been working on since the first day of school.
Representatives of the play visited the Board of Education on Thursday evening, Nov. 7 to share details about how they were able to win the honor of producing the play, which is based on a story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany.
For Harry Potter fans, the sequel-like story involves Potter’s son befriending the son of his nemesis Draco Malfoy, and embarking on an adventure. The play, which was originally performed in two parts, was first produced in London in 2016 and is currently running on Broadway at the Lyric Theatre.
“This particular production is very, very special,” said Kathryn Luckstone, artistic director of drama production at WHS. “We are the first high school to be performing this in Connecticut … It is an honor to us.”
Finn Ryder, a senior at WHS who plays Harry Potter, shared what the students needed to do for Wilton High School to be selected to do the play.
Broadway Licensing Global, a theatrical licensing agency distributing rights to the high school edition of the play, announced in 2023 that the play would be available in late 2024 for a limited number of schools.
“They had a contest called ‘Wands to the Ready,'” Ryder said. “‘Wands to the Ready’ wanted [entrants] to highlight what made a school magical and why should our school do it. It was a video contest that you had to submit.”
Having just completed a video project for Trackside Teen Center, Ryder was approached by WHS theater director Kevin Slater at the end of December 2023, to pitch in with his skills.
“I said I would love to work on this and get it going,” Ryder said, but was taken aback to learn he would only have three days to complete the video.
“We were hectic,” he said. “We were running with ideas. We had a vision. We wanted to have a tongue-in-cheek kind of a style of what their prompt was. They wanted it to be magical and tell us why it is magical.”
Ryder created what he described as a Monty Python-stylized video, done with silly humor that included a mock-up of a poster for the play. Also utilizing some clips of past Wilton shows, the video originally ran at four minutes in length.
“It took about four hours of just filming and then I went straight to the editing process and sent them the first draft,” he said, working on it all night only to discover that the submission required a two-minute cut. So he chopped it down and they made the deadline.
“On Feb. 13, 2024, we had the breaking news from Playbill itself,” he said, with the announcement that Wilton High School was among just 29 schools in the entire country — and the only one in Connecticut — that would receive permission to produce the play.
Will DeBernardis, another WHS student who plays Ron Weasley, talked about the production itself.
“If you’ve seen it on Broadway, it has like these insane special effects that for a high school are really hard to pull off,” he said. “The resources needed would be like Broadway-level, but Wilton High School did not want to shy away from that challenge.”
Consequently, he said, some changes have been added to make it work, including incorporating some flying characters and other surprises.
“It was a really great challenge but it was really well worth it … Hopefully when you sit and watch it at the high school you’ll think, ‘How did they do this?'” DeBernardis said.
DeBernardis produced two video trailers for the show as well — one version that was shared with students at Cider Mill School, which is holding a Harry Potter event on Friday, Nov. 8, and another (see the video above) to promote the production to the general public.
“We’re doing this in the Clune because it wouldn’t fit anywhere else,” explained Slater, calling it “pretty unheard of” that the first show was already sold out at the 800-seat venue.
Slater, who grew a little emotional talking about it, said the show will be phenomenal.
“I’ve been doing this for years and years… I have never directed a show as solid as this at the high school level,” he said, comparing it more to a college or professional production.
Luckstone concurred, attributing its high quality to the students themselves.
“It really is the students,” she said. “They brought this to life from the very beginning.”
“You’re not going to believe this is high school theater,” she said.
The show will run at the Clune Center for the Arts on Friday, Nov. 8, at 7 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 9, at 1 p.m. and again at 7 p.m., and on Sunday, Nov. 11, at 1 p.m.
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Wilton High School Theatre website.
I attended Saturday’s performance of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child with my family. It was fantastic! It was magical. Felt like we were in a Broadway theater and the acting was of the same high level. Congratulations to the superb actors and all who made this production top rate! You made Wilton so proud. Wish all of CT could have been there to experience such an amazing show.