With the Claudia Boettcher Theatre (CBT) cloaked in scaffolding and sawdust this Halloween, The Masters School found a new stage for its holiday creativity. On Oct. 31, a school-wide assembly in the Fonseca Center (FC) gym brought video games to life through live skits. Amid the laughter and colorful costumes, the event revived The School’s festive spirit from previous decades before videos came to dominate the celebration.
Every year, the senior class selects an overarching Halloween theme for the Upper School. This year they chose video games. Historically, each grade and department is assigned a category within the theme and creates a funny video. However, with the theater under construction this year, video presentations were not possible.
Rene Hurley, an Upper School science teacher and dean of the Class of 2025, described the extensive planning for this year’s assembly: “This process actually started the first week of school. We’ve been working on it this entire quarter, starting with working with the seniors to pick a theme, asking for ideas, and then voting for the theme.”
By early October, The School had already distributed the theme details to everyone involved, allowing groups several weeks to prepare.
As a throwback to earlier traditions, each group performed live skits instead of videos. “It took a lot of work and some compromise with our senior leadership and administration,” Hurley said. “Halloween has been a tradition at Masters for ages. I don’t even know how far back it goes, but far enough back that there weren’t video cameras, so they had to do live skits.”
Senior Class President Sophie Moussapour also emphasized the event’s return to tradition, saying, “It was actually some members of the faculty who have been here for a long time that reminded us that – pre-videos – actually everybody did skits, so this wasn’t a revolutionary idea. We were more so returning to a way it was done.”
The move to live skits proved to be a hit with some students. “The skits were way more engaging than the videos,” said junior Nathan Beckman. “They increase participation from everyone in the whole school versus the videos, where only a few people per grade present.”
In addition to the skits, the assembly included a blend of traditions and new surprises. “A big thing was that we still had the senior video [earlier in the week]. We also had that senior band at the end too, which we haven’t seen in a while, but has been part of [the Halloween assembly] in the past too,” Hurley said. “It was really great that we brought that together.”
Following the skits, the senior band, led by Mert Kaplan ‘25, played the Michael Jackson song “Thriller,” and the entire senior class rushed the gym floor to dance alongside them. Kaplan was approached by Senior Class Presidents Moussapour and Velizar Lazarov to direct the band for the event.
“Sophie approached me because she was in need of a director who could bring the group together and had access to DoPA,” Kaplan said. His experience in student-led bands and music classes made him a natural fit for the role.
Despite the initial challenges, Moussapour stressed the importance of gathering in person. “If we had [only] done videos, advisories would have been watching them alone in their advisory rooms,” she said.
