Meara Isenberg
Staff writer
@mearaannee
On the evening of May 22, Coppell High School sophomore Erin Jordan stood nervously on stage in front of a crowd of people she couldn’t see. With bright lights shining in her face, she accepted her award at the fifth annual Schmidt & Jones Awards Ceremony.
CHS Theatre took home four awards at the ceremony for their production of Thoroughly Modern Millie, Jordan for excellence in costume design, junior Claire Police and junior Venki Padala for best set design, senior Jackie Malish and senior Cole Cloutier for best choreography, and sophomore Jack Dalrymple for best male ensemble member.
The ceremony began at 7 p.m. at the Irving Arts Center’s Carpenter Performance Hall, when all of the nominees for best musical performed a musical number. Coppell was the first to take the stage.
“We performed the first song of the second act that was Forget About the Boy, which involved my costumes because that was the chorus side of it that I did,” Jordan said.
After each nominee performed, head of Schmidt & Jones Dr. Stephen Jones announced the rest of the nominees and award winners. The six winners had to prepare a speech for the event.
“We were thanking the judges and lyric stage who puts on the awards, our directors, our cast, and our crew,” Jordan said. “We were so excited and so happy just to be recognized.”
The theatre department had more than a few accomplishments this year, with the highest number of nominees for Schmidt & Jones, 13, and the addition of student-led set design and costume design.
“This year was a huge deal for us,” Jordan said. “You can oversee a lot of it, but to construct costumes and to put them in the show was really different and difficult. You put in months and months of work, and it’s tremendous to get this major honor.”
CHS Theatre may return to the Schmidt & Jones Awards next year with their 2015-2016 production Big Fish.
“It’s always nice to perform and it’s good because you share a good story, but it’s always nice to be recognized for the amount of work that we as a cast and crew did together,” Jordan said.
