On Oct. 2, members of the Branson faculty and staff teamed up and put on a talent show for the students. With both a 2:30 p.m. and a 3:45 p.m. show, almost all of the Branson community attended, all bringing the same spirit seen at the Junior Talent Show the week prior. Laughs echoed and music blasted out of the theater, marking the start of a hopeful new tradition.
This was not the first time Branson has had a faculty talent show. The last one was back in 2010, when the teachers put one on to raise awareness about the scholarship fund. This year’s is largely about teacher bonding.
Director of Theater Maura Vaughn said that the event was meant to be “an opportunity for faculty to try things they don’t normally do and put on a show for the students.
With 11 different acts, there were “an array of opportunities,” as Vaughn put it, for teachers to join in. From a “Hot Ones” trivia show with science teacher Carl Ma and Associate Director of College Counseling Matt Chan to a cheerleading routine featuring the entire English department, the show had “something for everyone’s entertainment taste.”
English teacher Elizabeth Bejarano, who is new to Branson this year, said that rehearsing had “definitely been an effort in collaboration.”
“[It was] overall a good, fun, collaborative experience and I got to see my colleagues in a light I don’t usually,” she said.
Bejarano’s act, the English department’s cheerleading routine about annotating, was largely inspired by her.
“I made the mistake of telling people I was a cheerleader in middle school, and that just spurred all of this inspiration,” she said. “The most exciting part of it so far was that I sprained my hip flexor and had to go to the ER,” she joked.
Bejarano is not the only participant who has enjoyed the process of rehearsing. Peter Zdrojewski, a science teacher and the director of outdoor and global education, partnered up with Spanish teacher Aaron Bardo to create a unique performance.
“Our act is called ‘Juggling Metaphors,’” Zdrojewski said before the show. “It is a visual and tactile deconstruction of the Branson student experience through juggling.”
For anyone wondering what exactly that entails, Zdrowjeski explained that they had chosen items representative of student activities, from everyday items like phones, “the things students use to avoid making conversation in the quad,” and instant ramen from the Snack Shack, “what students buy to avoid eating the lunch on meatless Monday,” to more metaphorical items like onions, which represent the layers that students fold back as they explore their identities at Branson, and sea urchins, which “represent students’ initial view of some teachers — thorny, spiky, a nuisance. However, after time, they start to appreciate them and understand their role in the greater Branson ecosystem.”
Zdrowjeski said “juggling has been a challenge” for the two of them. “Since we aren’t juggling typical items, [like] sea urchins,” he said. “We will see how that goes.”
However, Zdrowjeski made it clear that the experience has been great for bonding, adding, “It’s fun, though it’s a lot of work. It’s an extra thing to think about and work on, but we talk about community so much at this place … Everything is about community.”
Vaughn agrees. “The greatest success, really, is that a number of faculty — especially new faculty — have bonded with their team, or other teachers they don’t teach with, over the joy of making something bigger than themselves together,” she said. “Like the Junior Talent Show last week, this is really about bonding.”
Like JTS, “it’s a way to have fun together, laugh at each other, laugh at ourselves,” Zdrowjeski said.
