Before auditions get underway the director offers a final piece of advice. "Remember, have a good time. If you mess up, just start over," John Reese, who leads the Theatre Arts program at Deerfield, states. Some of the hopefuls awaiting their turn are first-timers, opting out of athletics this season to test their mettle on a different sort of playing field. Mr. Reese's advice stills, at least a little bit, those pesky butterflies stirring within. Others know the audition ropes; the Reid Theatre in the Reed Center for the Arts, their favorite after-class haunt. Call them the drama faithfuls, back for another run in a Deerfield production-if they make the cut...

John Reese likes seeing new faces turn up at auditions. "About half the cast of every play is new to theatre," he says. "We don't have a theatre clique at Deerfield expecting to get all the roles. I encourage everyone to come out for auditions, and we typically have very strong athletes in the group." And Reese is not above playing talent scout, ever alert for new blood-the junior who delivers a terrific declamation at School Meeting or the incoming students who have acted in community theatre back home and were attracted to Deerfield by the quality of the academy's theatre program.

On this afternoon in late March, Reese is casting The Fantasticks, the Off-Broadway musical that has kept New York audiences humming for 40 years. The director has only eight roles to fill, a modest number compared to the far larger casts featured in the season's two other full-length productions. "In the old days, the spring show was our biggest," recalls Reese, who has been a member of the Deerfield faculty since 1984, "but now colleges dictate the curriculum. The critical time for rehearsals of the spring play falls during the two-week period when students take AP exams. I've learned to schedule a play with a small cast because I know fewer students will try out."

And so, one by one, the students stand in front of their peers to present a monologue from memory and sing the familiar strains of Try to Remember or another tune from the show. "The music in Fantasticks is very difficult, requiring a broad range and complicated rhythms," Reese will note later, after callbacks and the final posting of the cast. "Some of the students had nice readings, but their lack of range eliminated them." Another casting consideration, he explains, is dictated by the play's stereotypical characters-Everygirl, Everyboy, Everyfather. "I was looking for students who would bring a freshness to their roles. Casting," as he often claims, "is half the battle."

Onward to rehearsals, and The Fantasticks players had better not let their studies drift-good grades are a must in Mr. Reese's theatre. All told, his actors spend more than 12 hours weekly in rehearsals, Monday through Friday, and up to 14 hours on the weekend before opening night-plus free time devoted to memorizing lines and cues and post-rehearsal socializing in the Reid lobby. During his early years at Deerfield, John Reese did not have the luxury of afternoon rehearsals nor girls vying for roles. "We rehearsed after dinner and had to import actresses-Stoneleigh Burnham girls, faculty wives or friends of mine from New York. After rehearsals, the boys would go back and do their homework-they'd be up until 2 A.M.

Meanwhile, I drove the Stoneleigh girls back to Greenfield every night, a 28-mile round-trip excursion." Seeking a saner schedule, Reese proposed shifting rehearsals to the afternoon, a move that would integrate the theatre program more visibly-and emphatically-into the Deerfield arts curriculum.

Deerfield students are required to take two one-term courses in the fine arts: art, dance, music and theatre. Reese, a practicing professional actor whose credits include classical drama, particularly Shakespearean, television, films and commercials (this summer, he returns to the Old Deerfield Theatre Festival for a lead in She Stoops to Conquer), teaches three sections of acting classes-two at the introductory level. The other is an acting tutorial for advanced students. The program also offers Directing for Theatre, as well as Introduction to Performing Arts and History of the Theatre for those who prefer to eschew the footlights. "My acting classes have a predominance of males," Reese states, pointing out that acting has always attracted large numbers of Deerfield men. "I feared they would clam up when girls enrolled, but they haven't." Tradition aside, Reese knows he faces a gender gap when casting his plays-in the literature of drama, there are far more roles for men than women. "Five years ago," he notes, "I took a sabbatical with the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Out of a company of 30, five were women."

Back from Christmas break, another group of Deerfield actors gathers in the Reid for rehearsal, this time for the winter production. Reese explains that the actors, who have been rehearsing since early December, are now "off book" for Act I. They have memorized their lines "word perfect" and know their cues. Opening night for what will be a four-performance run is still a long way off-Wednesday, February 16th. As the two male leads practice their lines, a crew of student technicians scurries up and down the iron spiral staircase to consult with Paul Yager, maestro of the technical side of Deerfield theatre, in his windowed perch. The play at hand today is Compulsion, an intense piece-not typically performed on a high school stage- based on the notorious Leopold-Loeb murder case and trial of the 1920s. The story of the two teenaged killers and their famous defense by Clarence Darrow has been interpreted in a best-selling novel, Hollywood film and Broadway drama. "I had forgotten about the play," Reese says, "until last spring when the Columbine High School shootings occurred. After reading the coverage and seeing the tapes, we were all asking ourselves: 'Why did the two students do it?' The tragedy reminded me of Compulsion; it seemed the play would have great relevance for students."

When drawing up his annual three-production schedule and the one-act plays performed by his acting classes, Reese balances the classics with contemporary drama, from Shakespeare to recent Pulitzer and Tony winners to experimental pieces; no work, as his choice of Compulsion reflects, is considered too ambitious for his young actors. Deerfield students, he notes, have been putting on plays since the academy's earliest days. The lights, however, have dimmed on one Deerfield tradition- Gilbert and Sullivan. "Their shows were one of Mr. Boyden's-and also Eric Widmer's-favorite things," says Reese. "Four years ago when I held auditions for Pirates of Penzance, no one turned out. Today's students aren't attracted to Gilbert and Sullivan; they don't think their works are funny, so we had to abandon them."

It is now two months after the first rehearsal of Compulsion-and one week before opening night. Patricia O'Neil has left her duties in the Academic Dean's Office to don her professional theatre hat-trained costumer for Deerfield plays. In the Green Room below the Black Box, she hands out clothes -fringed dresses for the play's flappers, suits with wide lapels for the lawyers, crepe afternoon dresses for the older female characters. Students, amused by the vintage styles, go into bathrooms to try on their outfits. Upstairs, student technicians crawl across the ceiling grille adjusting the show's lighting spots, while their techie colleagues below position props and fine-tune the sound system.

Rehearsals continue-a run-through of Acts I and II. John Reese, ever on the move, studying his actors from every angle, is pleased-the students are on the final lap and doing absolutely great. "Keep the momentum of the scene going; put some passion in it; now turn quickly; you're standing where the audience will be sitting; allow yourself to make a mistake; if it feels right, it's probably going to be right"-all the words of advice and encouragement proffered by the director and his student assistant director during the long hours of rehearsals have taken hold. "Tomorrow we'll work on trouble spots," Reese tells the actors. "and the next day, Friday, will be Tech Act I and Saturday, Tech Act II." The countdown is on- full dress rehearsals this weekend, more on Monday and Tuesday. All four of next week's performances are fully subscribed; they always are for Deerfield plays.

The news races from dorm to dorm on Saturday morning-a group of students was caught drinking the night before. The Compulsion technicians and actors do not want to believe what they hear: two of the culprits are in the play; one has a major role. Some go into denial-"We didn't want to put two and two together..." Others know immediately that "the play was done," given the school's policy of immediate suspension for drinking; still others hope for a miracle-somehow, the show will go on.

Unsure of the play's fate, the students continue to rehearse through Sunday. That evening after dinner, the Disciplinary Committee orders a three-day suspension for the offenders, to begin on Monday. Instead of donning their costumes and manning the lights for a final rehearsal, 28 actors and technicians assemble in the Black Box after Monday classes. Their discussion runs more than two hours; nearly everyone speaks-except Mr. Reese, for this must be the students' decision.

Should we postpone the opening until Thursday? Will the missing actors be back at school by then? Are we or are we not willing to sacrifice the play for principle? If we go forward, will the play's quality be lowered? How do we feel personally about the actors who violated our trust, let the group down? Would we be putting on the play for our own selfish reasons? In the end, with no personal animus toward the principals involved, the students vote, by a show of hands, to cancel all four performances. One student, angered by the decision, walks out. At the next School Meeting, the assistant director, surrounded by his fellow actors and technicians, announces the cancellation to the Deerfield community.

Then it is time to head to the Black Box for "striking"-what Yager calls the "systematic dismantling" of the set. By 6 P.M., exactly two hours before the show would have opened, the theatre is bare. Cast and crew-closer than ever now-drift outside. An actor begins a snowball fight, then, with whoops and cheers, everyone joins the exhilarating fray. Next month the call for auditions will go out for The Fantasticks. Two actors from Compulsion will land roles, their talented portrayals illuminating every performance; one of the actors was not in the snowball fight.