Farmington High School’s theater department recently performed the piece “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” for competition season. This piece was written by Celeste Raspanti. It is the story of a young Jewish girl during the Holocost. It follows her through her youth and shows the tragedies she endured, it’s a true tear-jerker.

This is not a light show, it is deeply emotional and demands respect from the audience and the performers depicting this tragedy.

“Doing a show like this has to come with a certain amount of respect for the characters you’re doing or else it becomes kind of meaningless,” senior, Pheadra Henry, said.

The performers all shared this emotional experience with each other and their audiences. This brings the question of whether high schools should perform such deep, important pieces more often over light and fun musicals.

“It is good to have a balance between fun and exciting shows and deeper sad ones because sometimes you need those. Life is sad and it’s important to see that on stage along with the happy,” senior, Kaitlyn Jepsen, said.

Doing these pieces gives audiences a wide range of emotions. Theater is to make people feel, and this includes the harder emotions that definitely made me cry.

“Art is an expression of human life and experiences, choosing to only do carefree things takes away from these heavy pieces,” Henry said.

“I Never Saw Another Butterfly” was beautifully done, from what I could see through my tears, and was a reminder of the atrocities so many faced. It is important for high schools to provide shows and productions that aren’t always light and fun. Showing the deeper and sometimes sadder range of emotions gives the performers and the audiences an almost refreshing experience of a new range of emotion.

Schools giving representation to topics that are, more often than not, avoided is extremely important for the audience and performers to remind them that things aren’t always happy and fun.

“I Never Saw Another Butterfly” will hopefully be coming to the theater soon. Keep and eye out for tickets! This piece is about 50 minutes of emotion and is fantastic. Go support our theater program and experience this wonderful piece!