Over the past few years, the Masters winter musical has seen a major uptick in students eager to get on stage. While many schools would use this opportunity to cut people from the cast, Mainstage, the theater company at Masters, decided on a solution that allows everyone who auditioned to perform: cast two shows and hire another director.
This year, Mainstage is putting on both Into the Woods and Ranked. Meg O’Connor, the theater director, will be directing Into the Woods, but another professional was needed to direct Ranked.
“We’re not trying to replicate Broadway, we’re trying to unlock the creative potential of students,” O’Connor said, “we’re absolutely looking for people who understand that and who are able to put students at the center of the program.”
Out of the six candidates interviewed, Emilie Goodrich stood out from the rest. Goodrich had received her Bachelor of Theater Arts from the University of Michigan and had pursued theater from an early age. She said that doing theater was one place where she truly felt accepted by other kids.
“I had Tourette syndrome,” she explained. “My parents didn’t really know what to do with me. They were like – ‘we need her to feel like she has a safe space and have something to focus on.’ And they put me in theater.”
Fast-forward a decade later, and Goodrich was directing, acting and teaching theater professionally. Her talent and perspective as a young adult made her an excellent choice to direct Ranked.
“She understands [the competition of the academic world] on a gut level herself and has empathy for what the characters in the play are going through but also what the students are facing out there,” O’Connor said.
One of the cast members of Ranked, Ross Manzano ‘26, said, “I think that she [Goodrich] has a lot of awesome ideas that she’s prepared for us.”
Goodrich explained what drew her to Masters and what it’s been like working on the show.
“It was so important to me to work in a school that supported the arts, and that I felt like I was being supported, and I’ve seen nothing but that,” Goodrich said, “There’s such a strong team of individuals around me wanting to get things done.”
Together, O’Connor, Goodrich, and the rest of the Mainstage company have been working hard to highlight the key message of Ranked.
“I think it’s so important for teens to be in shows about themselves,” Goodrich said, “[Ranked] should be a show where the audience walks away [and] realize that everything seems more daunting. That life is not always fair.”
Goodrich said she hopes that audience members will walk away understanding that every milestone in someone’s life can feel very scary but that everything will always turn out the way that it’s supposed to.
