Her head bobbed side to side and her shoulders shrugged up and down as her snapping fingers created a rhythm.
“And that’s all I got,” new theater teacher Kayla Gahagan said when asked about her dance experience. “I can weave my head and shake my shoulders and that’s it.”
Gahagan may not have any dance experience but she has acting under wraps.
“She’s boisterous,” Theater Arts I student Sam Yigdal said. “[When I first met her] I could definitely tell she was an actress.”
Gahagan took theater in high school, studied theater education at Appalachian State, was a student teacher in Boone starting her sophomore year of college and went on to be a student teacher in Cary her senior year. Now she is at Northwood for her first full-time teaching position.
“It’s a dream first job,” Gahagan said. “I love that the administration considers the arts, athletics and academics equally. That is how I think it should be.”
The arts community believes that Gahagan is succeeding at filling the shoes of former theater teacher Lori Carlin, who took a position at the Central Office.
“I think she’s doing a great job and she’s not trying to replace Dr. Carlin in any way,” Ensemble student Gaby Cila said. “She is trying to bring her own aspects to the arts department.”
Gahagan is even considering expanding the arts department further by opening up the play to students outside of acting ensemble.
“I think it will be good for her because right now she is so limited with what plays she can do based on her class size,” dance teacher Leah Smith said.
Gahagan only has 12 students in her Ensemble class and had to pick a play that would feature all of the actors. The play will be James and the Giant Peach.
“I wanted to be able to bring the play to middle and elementary school levels, so I wanted to do a children’s play,” Gahagan said.
Gahagan says that ensemble will have to alter their acting for the play and tone it down.
“They’ll have to cheese it up,” Gahagan said. “Children’s theater is a lot more expressive, not so realistic, which they may have been used to in previous plays.”
Gahagan will be directing the spring musical Hairspray and she predicts that auditions will be held this semester before 2014.
“[The musical] will definitely be a challenge, especially with all of us working together for the first time,” Gahagan said. “We are all just really excited about it.”
This will not be Gahagan’s first time putting on productions. She helped with Nunsense where she did costume design and put on plays such as The Tortoise and the Hare and Just Like Us, which were one act plays directed and designed by her at Cary High School.
“I’m most looking forward to the productions that we will be putting on this year,” Gahagan said. “I love collaboration.”
– By Lauren Merrill