Theatre
Performing Arts: Theatre
The Performing Arts Program is a dynamic and engaging program that reaches out to all students who wish to grow as actors performers, theatre technicians, directors, playwrights and dancers. Whether you have been acting all of your life, or are just getting started you will find your voice at Morris Catholic.
In addition to the Theatre Studies courses listed on the main arts page, we also offer several performing arts opportunities per year:
Spring Musical: large-scale production, featuring close to 100 students every year in the cast, crew and orchestra. Rehearsal goes from January until May, when the show is performed. All are welcome, and no one is cut from the production. Past productions include: 42nd Street, Big Fish, Footloose, Ragtime, The Civil War, Titanic, Les Miserables, Fame, Godspell.
Fall Production: audition-based production, featuring some of the strongest acting talents in the school. This year’s production, Little Women features the largest cast of 50 students. Previous productions include: Inherit the Wind, You Can't Take it With You, Little Women, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Crucible, Our Town.
Winter One-Act: an hour-long one-act play written by upper-level Theatre Studies 3 and 4 Honors students, and performed by new talent in the freshmen and sophomore classes.
The Performing Arts students compete annually in the New Jersey Thespian Festival in numerous dramatic, comedic and musical performance categories. We also have the Drama Club, which has bi-weekly meetings and once a month Coffeehouse nights, where students perform and play theatre games in the KPAC. Distinguished theatre students will also be inducted into the Thespian National Honor Society.
Past Productions:
2012-2013
- Over 125 students currently enrolled in the four-level Theatre Studies Program.
- In 2019, Theatre 3 and 4 Honors wrote, directed, and produced their sixth annual original one-act, Welcome to Russo's. This time it was an original musical!
- 2019 Spring Musical, 42nd Street, featured over 80 students in the cast and crew and orchestra!
- Over 40 students in the cast of last year's fall play, Inherit the Wind.
- 20 members of the department performed alongside professional Broadway actors in at Lincoln Center in the concert production of The Scarlet Pimpernel, presented by Manhattan Concert Productions.
- Troupe 23 won 8 awards at the 2019 NJ Thespian Festival, for categories of monologue, contrasting monologue, musical solo, and dramatic duo.
- Kole Boyd won 3rd place Best Actor for his performance in Inherit the Wind at the NJ Thespian Festival.
- Eric Lippe and Grace St. Pierre won first place in dramatic performance at the 2019 County Teen Arts Festival.
- Notable performing arts alumni get into prestigious performing arts colleges including: Muhlenberg College, American University, Marymount, PACE, NYU Tisch, Emerson, Manhattanville, Drew, Wagner, American Musical Dramatic Academy (AMDA), Rowan, Marshall.
- February 2014 - Cast of Titanic perform with Manhattan Concert Productions' concert of "Titanic the Musical" at Lincoln Center, with original cast.
- 2012 & 2013 NJ State Thespian Champions for performances of Our Town and The Crucible.
- Chapter Select performers at the 2012 and 2013 National Thespian Festival in Lincoln, Nebraska.
