A week and a half before the fall play, ‘The Curious Savage’, opened the cast and crew stayed at school until 7 at night. They went over every aspect of the show, from paragraphs of dialog to the timing of lights.
But there was one part that had not yet been cast. With tech week soon to start they needed to find someone fast. They needed a find young boy to play a character’s son. The part had no lines and barely any time on stage but the part still needed to be filled.
Luckily they did not need to look far for the character to be found.
Junior Glynis Williams had mentioned that she had a little brother, Rhys Williams, who would be able to play the role. When the director Dan Dobrovich saw Rhys he agree and asked him to be in the show right away. Rhys accepted immediately and was ready to start rehearsing.
This was far from the end of the story, though. Rhys still had many challenges to overcome. Rhys is just like every other ten-year-old boy, except for two things. He has Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) a form of autism, on one side of his brain. On the other side of his brain, he has ADHD, so two conflicting things are working against him.
“This will cause him to have difficulty focusing on things like school, but on other things, such as Legos, you can’t get him away from it,” Williams said. “Or if anything is out of the normal from his regular routine he will have a hard time with it.”
PDD-NOS can affect speech. Children with this may stutter, have to think more about what they are going to say, and may not handle stress well.
“[Rhys] doesn’t do well under pressure,” said Williams. “If people make too big a deal out of it he may get scared and run away. Sitting there silently for too long is also hard for him because of his ADHD. It is going to [take a lot of restraint] from him.”
Despite his conditions, Rhys did great in rehearsals, although at one point he did start to get worried about the performance.
“He was really afraid he was going to get stage fright,” said Williams. “But after we did the first preview performance he was really excited. He got a t-shirt and was excited to show all of his friends at school. He also [liked] getting to talk to all these older kids, he thought they were really cool.”
Not only did Rhys learn he could do well in a play during his time with the cast, but the cast also learned a little about working with someone with special needs.
Senior Ana Gomez, who played Rhys’ mother, really enjoyed working with him.
“I just needed to make him comfortable; by making sure he was ready. He was really easy to work with,” said Gomez. “We would always play the quiet game with him. He liked playing that. He would always say ‘Shh, quiet on set!’”
The finished product was superb during the Saturday night performance. At the end of the show a relaxed little boy was seen sitting calmly on his “mother’s” lap. Rhys looked like he was having a great time being on stage and more than excited to be there.
