Photo by Sofia Tamayo
The Jazz Age couple: Daisy Buchanon (senior Ellie Hurley) and Jay Gatsby (junior Alex Bradley) encapsulate a forbidden romance. But remember, “God sees everything.”
WeGo Drama returns to the stage to produce award-winning shows
WeGo Drama is a club for students who are interested in theater or performance art, whether being on the Mainstage or Studio 94. Mainstage shows are larger productions, such as this spring’s “Freaky Friday”, while Studio 94 shows are student-directed, and often experimental, picked from the advanced drama class, or IHSA competition series.
“Our really big shows we’ll just call that a mainstage show, and some are things that are run a little bit differently like our IHSA, some of our younger audiences, sometimes we have student directed, or we have a show that comes from the advance drama class, and we call those our studio shows” said English teacher and WeGo Drama sponsor, Mark Begovich.
According to Begovich, the productions selected each year are always based on an annual theme. He has advised WeGo Drama since the beginning of his teaching career, 13 years ago. Begovich decided to sponsor WeGo Drama due to his love and passion towards the art.
“I got involved in theatre when I was very, very young – actually kindergarten – and I’ve always had theatre in my life ever since,” said Begovich.
Begovich was also responsible for the group’s name change to “WeGo Drama”, as the organization was known as the Thespian Honor Society before. The name “WeGo Drama”, according to Begovich, is more inclusive.
The group was excited to return to the stage in 2021, following the pandemic, when meetings had to be held virtually. Despite the hardships, WeGo Drama produced two shows in the fall of 2020 and spring of 2021. Plays were recorded via Zoom or on individual recording devices, and then spliced to create a cohesive video.
“When we were remote and then when we came back as hybrid, that was hard. But last year when we started to be, like, really full-time in person with everyone, everything picked back up. In fact, we have more students involved than we had even just before the pandemic,” said Begovich.
WeGo Drama again opened the doors of the theatre back in August 2021, and has produced a number of acclaimed shows since then, including “The Great Gatsby” in September, and the more recent “The One-Act Play That Goes Wrong“. Anyone is welcome to join the club, audition for shows, or take part in the award-winning tech crew.