A Trick-Or-Treat Takes Over SING!

For this year’s Junior SING!, the top voted theme was Halloween, winning over the other choices of Chambers Street experiences, a thrilling pigeon-fighting series, and depictions of the most terrorizing classes at Stuy. However, a big misconception amongst the juniors was that the Halloween theme would reflect one’s entire experience at Stuyvesant. In light of this, the scriptwriters decided to make the show as realistic to Stuy as possible.

However, the tech crew wasn’t too happy about this. Their main complaint was that building the houses for the trick-or-treating scene would be too much of a hassle. The budget couldn’t be negotiated anymore, and plying advisors with blue Sour Patch gummies didn’t work this time. So, the scriptwriters and tech directors were forced to follow the advisor’s tips on how to deal with the tight budget and make houses out of chairs stolen from the English classrooms. Although this left the English teachers a little confused, their students were pretty content. One student was particularly thankful that he didn’t have to write his in-class essay because there weren’t enough seats. Instead, he got to write his essay at home in 36 minutes (to account for the Conference day) and told his teacher he’d use ChatGPT to help him keep track of time. His teacher reluctantly agreed. 

Most of the crews, however, didn’t have many issues. L&S and stage really enjoyed having only one cue the entire show, while art lamented the monotonous color palette. 

When the props crew was interviewed, they seemed to be eager about tech crew’s problems. 

“It feels pretty nice to see tech struggling for once,” one member said. “Maybe next time they’ll learn to let us borrow some of their budget so we can buy more cardboard…”

This eagerness, however, seemed to override their decision-making capabilities during the show. There was a large miscommunication amongst the actors and the props crew. During the show, one of the actors had to pick up the jar of marshmallow fluff from the counter and eat some of it. Unfortunately, a props member misunderstood their cue and placed the container with the purple spider web goo on the counter in a rush instead of the jar. The actor’s mouth then was glued shut, so an advisor filled in their lines from backstage. However, the audience was quite confused as to why the actor of Agent Myth suddenly had the voice of an exhausted middle-aged person. 

One of the final parts of the show had been the special trick-or-treating scene. The antagonist, Bernarthany, was to walk into classrooms with his friends, Baya and Mally, and play a trick on each of the houses that the tech crew placed in the classrooms. The protagonist, Yuca, and her friend, BamHam, would try to prevent them from doing so. However, the earlier botched scene seemed to have stirred some tension amongst the actors. 

Bernarthany’s first trick was to offer the house some candy that was filled with the spider web goo. However, the owner of the house was also Agent Myth, whose mouth was still glued shut. Consequently, Bernathany decided to offer Baya the candy instead. Earlier, Baya’s actress had asked Bernathany’s actress backstage what they got on their AP Chemistry test, so they had been a little upset with each other since then. The classroom the scene was set in also happened to be their AP Chemistry room, so Bernathany’s actress was experiencing some scantron-bubbling trouble flashbacks. Unfortunately, Baya’s actress forgot that the candy was a trick and agreed to eat some. In the next scene, however, she was to sing with Agent Myth. They then became an overpowering harmony of garbled caveman-like noises, which did not quite resemble the planned song dedicated to appreciating the comfort of cafeteria chocolate milk after exams. By the end of the song, most of the audience seemed to be hurriedly exiting.

However, after the show, Slate and the advisors also weren’t too happy about the improv. As a result, the Student Union decided that juniors were permanently barred from voting on their SING! themes, citing that the collective AP Precalculus stress must’ve been infecting them all. Bernarthany’s actress argued that AP Chemistry was the real problem, but the deans dismissed it as bias.