At the start of this school year, theater department head Jeremy Stoll brought in his friend and professional stage designer Kim Clark-Kaczmarek (who also to help with the Theater IV classes). Clark-Kaczmarek comes to the high school four days a week and works hands-on with the students during the upcoming production of Into the Woods. The theater IV class focuses more on the set designing aspect of theater, so bringing in Clark-Kaczmarek was a no-brainer. Clark-Kaczmarek explains her and Stoll’s friendship and how far back it dates.

“I met him [Stoll] when he was doing a production of Into the Woods at Dana College in 2002,” said Clark-Kaczmarek.

Stoll then goes on to explain what made him ask Clark-Kaczmarek to come to the high school to help play such a big role within the theater department.

“When I first took this job, Vince Carlson-Brown was still doing the [Clark-Kaczmarek’s] position,” Stoll said. “Then after he directed his first show [at WHS], he got a job with Nebraska Shakespeare, so I had a vacancy that I needed to fill. Vince’s focus was more on the directing side, which I like to do and know a lot more about than, say, technical design [of the stage]. Kim is really good on that end, so I asked her if she’d be interested in doing something like that part-time.”

Stoll is also happy with Clark-Kaczmarek’s residence, and uses her as a second voice and different opinion when it comes to many decisions, often leading to the two discussing choices concerning the play during class time.

“These conversations are happening in front of the class and with the class, so enlightenment comes in the form of watching two people that actually do it [theater], and including them [the class] in those conversations and in those thought processes,” Clark-Kaczmarek said. “I’m also seeing how this process should be done in a classroom format.”

The ultimate goal behind bringing Clark-Kaczmarek in, shared by both Stoll and Clark-Kaczmarek, is to give the students as much of a realistic, hands-on, and team-building approach as possible. They want to show the Theater IV class what it’s really like to work behind the scenes, turmoil and joy included.

“It’s a total practical class,” Clark-Kaczmarek said. “It’s not, ‘Let’s just sit and look at a book and read about how you put a show together.’ It’s really unique because designing for a high school is not designing for the Omaha Community Playhouse, because we have budgetary, space and time factors, and we don’t hire a bunch of people to come in and build our sets for us.”

Stoll expanded by saying, “I think we [Clark-Kaczmarek and Stoll] have found a rhythm for how we work together. I think we’re pretty much on board for the vision of the theater department as a whole, because most metro area high schools of this [WHS] size have more than one person running their theater department. Eventually, having her on staff would be ideal, because she would have that stability here, and we’d have that constant back and forth between us, but there’d also be more structure and more resources too. It’s just to continue to grow the department and do really good things and create opportunities for kids.”