Somers Pt. students to perform play despite loss of costumes, sets, props
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
SOMERS POINT — The Somers Point School District is working hard to prepare for its junior play after having lost a lot of its sets, costumes and props in a fire Jan. 30.
The fire started at about 4:30 a.m. at Sure Storage in Somers Point, destroying one entire building containing 80 storage units, all of which were a total loss.
Superintendent Michelle CarneyRay-Yoder said the district lost one unit for the parents club holding scenery and different things used for the annual eighth-grade dance and two storage units of costumes, props and scenery for all of the plays its student perform — the junior play in March and the summer play.
“We had vintage clothing, vintage jewelry, all kinds of stuff to pull from during our productions,” she said, noting that the younger students would be performing “Junie B. Jones” at the end of March. “We knew they had the costumes in storage. We usually pulled 90 percent of our costumes from storage.”
Sydney Somers, director of the district’s Community Education & Recreation department, has been administratively overseeing the play for about a year.
She said the junior play is scheduled for March 26-28 at Gateway Playhouse, the first time the district will be holding its performance at the Bay Avenue theater.
“We are working with them for the first time as community partners,” she said, noting that the Gateway also lost a lot of its property in the same fire.
“It’s especially hard since Gateway was our partner and they lost everything, too,” Somers said.
The junior play is performed by students in first through third grades, and “Junie B. Jones” is based on a popular series of children’s books.
“We generally do, for the younger students, a Disney musical, so we were excited to be offering a little more curriculum- and literary-based production this year,” Somers said.
She said the district has been doing two performances each year for the past decade and had accumulated a lot of items large and small since it had a place to store them.
“We have been building up a lot of set pieces, larger props and things since we could store them,” she said, adding that Somers Point is involved in an inter-district theater exchange program in which it works with other area schools to swap items needed for productions.
Somers also said the plays have been sponsored every year by the Somers Point Foundation for Education’s donation of $4,500, as well as community sponsors such as Shore Medical Center.
“Sets and play productions are very expensive,” she said.
Somers, who is also executive director of the foundation, said the district generally alternates productions between popular Disney plays one year, then a smaller, traditional musical piece the next. One of the district’s more elaborate productions was “Lion King, Jr.” in 2015, which she said was the first time a school in southern New Jersey had received the rights to.
“The pieces were gorgeous and we have loaned them out to other districts to use,” she said.
Somers said there is a group of volunteers called the Drama Mamas who work behind the scenes to help make the productions a success.
“We have awesome parent volunteers,” Somers said.
Somers said the district generated a list of items lost and submitted it to its insurer but won’t be getting the money any time soon, and certainly not in time for the March play.