From left, Sophomore Ben Zinn and Seniors Noah Keil and Gia Lish in ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’

‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child’ Casts its Spell at CA

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, this year’s Upper School mainstage play—in the Leach Center for the Performing Arts from December 12-14, 2024—is without a doubt, as director and Theater and Dance Instructor Melissa Zaremba explains, “a lot of everything.”

The original Broadway production, which has been running since 2018 after its launch in London’s West End, cost $35 million to mount—a record for a nonmusical production—with an additional $23 million going toward the redesign and renovation of the Lyric Theater, where it was staged. Drawing on the original British book series by author J.K. Rowling, and the accompanying hit movies, the five-hour epic capitalizes on the eagerness of a massive global fanbase—book, movie, and other revenues total more than $25 billion to date—to experience a fantastical Potter adventure in person.

And that is what audiences get: An actual lake with water was constructed on stage as just one of many elaborate set pieces inside the Lyric, and specialized technologies were incorporated into every nook and cranny above- and below-stage to enable magical explosions, spell casting, time travel, levitating brooms, flying dementors, and plenty more of the signature elements from the Harry Potter universe. A shop crew of 220 people was required to build and install the scenery and lighting, and during the show, a stage crew of 26, 16 wardrobe and hair professionals, and five stage managers are required to make it all run. 

With a budget and scope that were somewhat smaller, jokes Zaremba, and just months to bring the production to life on Colorado Academy’s campus, “Right out of the gate, we knew we weren’t even going to try to duplicate anything about the Broadway production.”

For starters, CA would stage the high school adaptation of the play, which shaves three hours off the original all-day theater experience. More importantly, Zaremba and her close collaborator, Technical Theater Instructor James Meehan, would focus on maximizing magical impact while minimizing complexity and cost. There was no question, for example, that they wanted their own flying dementors; the only thing they didn’t know was how they’d achieve the effect.

“Sometimes it’s nice to challenge yourself,” Zaremba says. “This is a very fresh piece—few high schools have had time to produce it since it became available last year; and it’s thrilling, because everybody knows Harry Potter. But it’s also a little terrifying, because there’s no recipe for how to do it.”

Melissa Zaremba reviewing notes with the cast

Indeed, doing Cursed Child with only the multi-million-dollar Broadway version to go on was no easy task. 

The work started over the summer, when Zaremba procured dozens of different types of black cloaks and capes, trying them on in her living room to determine which might produce the sparkliest, swishiest effect under the lighting on the Leach Center’s stage. Costumes are critical in the Harry Potter universe, she explains, and landing on the right combination of fabrics and colors would be key in gaining the audience’s buy-in to the on-stage world. 

Death Eaters dressed in their cloaks

Because of strict copyright protections and other licensing restrictions, Zaremba made her own versions of the famous Hogwarts house banners, and when there was anything else she needed that she couldn’t acquire affordably, she plundered CA’s stock of old costumes, wigs, and other accessories to find items that could be modified to fit the play.

The wig worn by Sophomore Jay Bhandari, as Severus Snape, just needed a trim after belonging to Wednesday, the star of last year’s Middle School musical, The Addams Family.

Zaremba also embarked on her quest for the large collection of magic wands needed to equip all the Hogwarts students, Death Eaters, and other characters in the play; some of these would even have to glow with light or launch fireballs. But buying the real thing proved to be cost-prohibitive, so she enlisted the help of Meehan and Theater Tech and Engineering Coordinator Ian Marzonie to fabricate the working props using the theater shop’s 3D printer and some off-the-shelf electronics and pyrotechnics.

At left, Junior Gideon Silverman-Joseph as Harry Potter watches Zinn, playing Albus Potter, launch a fiery spell from a pyrotechnic wand.

Meehan and Marzonie, she notes, were instrumental in realizing one of the most important focal points in Cursed Child: a magical bookcase that not only features flying, talking tomes but also has the ability to devour and then regurgitate full-size actors. Working with the students in the Upper School Technical Theater course, who also provide backstage support with props, sets, costumes, lighting, and sound throughout the show, Meehan and Marzonie were able to put together an elaborate set piece whose surprising magical powers are orchestrated by a handful of crew members squeezed inside a painted wooden frame.

“The bookcase is a wonderful example of all the collaboration and work that were needed to pull this off,” observes Zaremba. “Most of what you see on stage shares a similar story: We got together and just tried different approaches until we were successful.”

The magical bookcase swallows Lish as Delphi, while Sophomore Karsten Braun as Ron Weasley tries to help.

That approach certainly paid off in the case of Cursed Child’s flying dementors, an essential spectacle which Zaremba constructed out of chicken wire and fabric, then figured out how to fly above the Leach Center auditorium with help from Meehan’s Tech Theater students.

Dementors attack Braun’s Weasley and Hermione Granger, played by Junior Rory Goldstein.

As Meehan paraphrases, “Our discussions really came down to: First, the answer is yes. Now, how do we do it?”

Riding the Harry Potter train

Pivotal to CA’s production was the dedication of the students in the cast and crew, who all found themselves playing much bigger roles than perhaps they had signed up for. 

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, set 19 years after the final installment of the original book series, has a notoriously convoluted plot, in which Harry’s oldest child, Albus Potter, teams up with Scorpius Malfoy, the son of Harry’s Hogwarts rival, Draco Malfoy, to time-travel to numerous locations throughout the “Potterverse” to save the life of Harry’s school friend Cedric Diggory, who was killed many years earlier by the power-hungry wizard Voldemort. Their efforts alter the course of history, ultimately foiling a plot by Voldemort’s daughter, Delphi, to use a time-turner to bring the dark lord back to power.

Characters use the Marauder’s Map to track Albus and Scorpius through time and space.

To realize such a complex narrative, in which time and place are constantly shifting on stage, Zaremba recruited the cast members to assist the stage crew in transforming sets, staging, costumes, and props throughout the show, in full view of the audience. There would be no polite transitions under blackout or behind the curtain; space would be at such a premium with all the sets and effects that there wouldn’t even be a backstage passageway for cast and crew to move through invisibly.

Hogwarts robes—just one of the many costumes that require a quick change

Cursed Child starts with the sound of a train”—the Hogwarts Express, Zaremba explains—“and so I tell the cast and crew, when this play starts, we’re all getting on this train together, and we’re not stepping off until the very end.” This play moves, and part of the fun is in trying to keep up with the breakneck plot, characters magically disguised by polyjuice potion, and frequent location changes.

There are even choreographed dance numbers (though no singing), notes Zaremba, so the actors use coordinated moves to depict key moments, such as their first learning to use their wands at Hogwarts, or the reveal of an alternate timeline in which Draco Malfoy and his Death Eater minions strut their stuff to demonstrate their power.

The Hogwarts dance sequence

As part of their strategy of maximizing magic while minimizing complexity, Zaremba and Meehan designed all their set pieces on wheels, and limited construction projects to must-haves like brick walls and towering staircases, which could be freely moved around the stage and reconfigured to serve as grand interiors, spooky exteriors, and everything in between. From scene to scene, cast and crew members rush across the stage to position and reposition the set, with actors sometimes switching their tearaway costumes just before jumping into their role in a fresh location.

Junior stage manager Natalie Gottlieb working with Senior Tech Theater student Clark Akuthota on a rolling doorway

Moving as quickly as they do, says Zaremba, “At times we establish a room with just a bed and a door; there’s no time for anything else. I think of it like playing with Legos—it may require a little bit more imagination and work on the part of the actors and the crew, but it means we get to spend more time on everything else.” 

Adds Ninth Grader Holly Fergason, a first-time Tech Theater student in charge of props and wardrobe, “The quick costume changes are my favorite: They’re stressful, because everything in this play moves so fast, but it’s like magic.”

Ninth Grade Theater Tech student Holly Fergason, at right, painting a backdrop

Harry Potter’s stage manager, Junior Natalie Gottlieb, is a veteran of numerous large productions in the Leach Center, and by now, she says, the high-pressure position is “kind of fun for me! It’s a job where you get to do a little bit of everything. Early on, with so many moving parts, I was running around like crazy, trying to help with all the set moves and sound and lights—running up and down the theater stairs constantly. But I’ve done it enough that I’m getting the hang of how to optimize exactly what I do at all the rehearsals, and during the actual run I can kind of tell everyone, ‘Okay, it’s your turn now.’”

Gottlieb confers with Zaremba before the start of the show.

Potterheads, unite!

Every student involved in Cursed Child really does get their turn, and then some. Junior Reece Scyphers uses the bass singing voice he has cultivated in CA’s choral ensembles in playing three separate roles, including the station master at King’s Cross Platform 9¾, the gray-haired Draco Malfoy, and the gruff Sorting Hat, which places incoming Hogwarts students into Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin House.

Senior Reece Scyphers as the Sorting Hat with Rosie Risch, who portrays Rose Granger-Weasley

Having participated in only one previous mainstage production, Scyphers says, “Theater at CA is an amazingly accepting community. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been on the stage for eight years or it’s your first time—so long as you are committed to it, you’re going to find your people here.”

Tenth Grader Ben Zinn, who stars as Albus Potter, has been in his share of CA productions, starting in Middle School. “It’s been incredible to see the progress we’ve made over the years,” he says. “I’ve acted and sung with some of these people for so long at this point—I love it every day.”

Zinn, as Albus Potter, right, facing down his father, Harry, played by Silverman-Joseph

According to Junior Gideon Silverman-Joseph, who plays the elder Potter, “I grew up totally immersed in the Harry Potter world: I read all the books with my parents; I watched all the movies. I am so excited I get to try to replicate this incredibly famous role that everybody knows.”

For Silverman-Joseph, as for most of those involved in this production, treading upon characters and storylines that are sacred ground for hundreds of millions of fans comes with pressure, too.

Silverman-Joseph as Harry, opposite Senior Gabby Myers, who plays Ginny Weasley, his wife

“This is definitely one of my biggest roles so far,” he says, “and the only thing most people have to compare it to is the movies or the Broadway version. It’s definitely a little nerve-wracking to be one of the first to do a role that very few others have done.”

Still, says Silverman-Joseph, the aura of J.K. Rowling’s creation has also done much to bring new interest and new students to theater at CA.

“It’s wonderful to see the Ninth Graders coming into the program for the first time—I think a majority of the cast are Ninth and Tenth Graders. Because the story is so famous, a lot of students who might not normally do theater are here, too. It just broadens the group and involves an even larger part of the CA community. It can be fun to be in a smaller show, too, but when something is this big, it’s exciting to know everybody wants to be part of it.”

The full cast and crew

As Gottlieb, who as an Eighth Grader was assistant stage manager for the first show ever mounted in the Leach Center, Alice in Wonderland, observes, “It’s so cool to think back, because every show has a really distinct culture. It’s what makes it so great and so sad at the same time: Every show here is amazing, but then it’s also the only show that’s going to bring this particular group of people together. It makes it really special.”

A magical escape

For Zaremba, one of the truly special things about this year’s mainstage play is the feeling of magic and warmth that permeates the world of Harry Potter and, consequently, casts a welcome spell over CA.

“Knowing this play would fall around the holidays, just after a tense political season, I wanted us to stage something that would be uniting and provide a common thread. A lot of the themes in Cursed Child have to do with families and friendships and how parents and children see their relationships change over time. And, ultimately, it’s a hopeful story; everyone needs that right now.”

Myers, as Ginny, tries to separate an angry Harry (Silverman-Joseph) and Draco Malfoy (Scyphers).

And there’s more good news, says Zaremba. With so many younger students coming to the theater program for the Harry Potter experience, “We are rich with talent right now; and because so many of them are in Ninth or Tenth Grade, we’ll have several more years to watch them grow through a lot more CA productions.”

One of the very few Seniors in the Harry Potter cast, Gia Lish, who plays the dark and commanding Delphi, explains, “My favorite part of theater at CA is actually the rehearsals, because I get to spend time with all these awesome people. The cast is doing a ‘Secret Santa’ gift exchange right now, and it just shows how close we all are and how much we care about each other.”

Lish as Delphi, left, with Amos Diggory (Alex Aleong), Harry, and Scorpius

Of course, playing a powerful magical character is nice, too, acknowledges Lish. “I’ve been such a huge Harry Potter fan my entire life. Having the nostalgia of knowing all the books and movies, it’s amazing to be inside that world now, casting spells and using a wand and interacting with characters I’m so familiar with.” Even better, she says, is the opportunity to play the scheming daughter of the ultimate dark wizard, Voldemort. “There’s just something so fun about being evil.”

Delphi enchants Harry and Scorpius.

Evil or not, starring in Cursed Child and looking ahead to performing in the spring musical, Legally Blonde, have made for a fantastic year for this Senior, who plans to continue with musical theater in college. It’s the “regulars” like Lish, says Zaremba, who do so much to nurture the welcoming culture that keeps theater at CA going strong, season after season. “Our students create a space where it’s okay for someone new to jump in; and then they surprise us with everything that they can do and the energy they add to the program.”

“It’s never too late to join in—you may discover it’s something you really love.”

For Gottlieb, the veteran, the appeal of CA’s theater program couldn’t be any clearer than in one of her favorite scenes in Harry Potter: the staircase “ballet,” in which the entire cast and crew move the two giant sets of stairs gracefully around the stage, as Albus and Scorpius ride on top, trying to understand the nature of their friendship.

A moment from the staircase ballet

“Students built those staircases,” notes Gottlieb, “and now they’re all working together to push them around and create this dramatic, beautiful moment. It’s the reason we’re all here.”