With one pen, one paper and one spotlight, hundreds of students prepare to review and celebrate their peers in theater through the Cappies Committee. The Cappies is an organization that gives high school students the opportunity to write reviews for shows within their district. This program offers a friendly competition for writers, actors, and other performing artists in Northern Virginia.
The Madison Cappies Team is a group of ten Madison High School student critics, currently led by senior Zoey Miller (’24). To start the year, the Cappies team takes writing workshops and various training classes that structure the five reviews they complete for each show they watch. At the end of the year, Cappie teams across the district meet to vote on different nominations for competition at The Annual Cappie Gala. This event takes place in late spring at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC for the students all over the county to celebrate their accomplishments from the previous show season.
“We, the cappies, go around to different schools, watch shows, write reviews, and vote for awards at the end of the year,” Kate Townsend (’24) said. “It is a great group, learning experience, and a phenomenal way to meet people within your community.”
Cappies provides an opportunity for artists to stand out in college applications and build connections in the performing arts community. Unlike other competitions, the main premise of this organization is to build a community of artists within schools without eliminating the vital competitive nature. The Cappies’ goal is consistently being accomplished according to leading actor, Jonah Uffelman (’24).
“Having that incentive that we go to a special event that could potentially be recognized for the work that we do makes our program so much more enthusiastic to perform their work,” Uffelman said. “Even though this is ‘just’ a public school, this program makes us feel even more accomplished to compete with a plethora of other schools. It is a great event to get everyone involved and excited.”
While the critics team is full this year, they are recruiting people for specific positions next year. Cappies has made it clear that interested candidates should have a strong work ethic and appreciation for the arts. It is an unostentatious application process, according to Miller.
“So at the end of each school year anyone who wants to can apply to be a critic by writing a review of any show they’ve seen in the past,” Miller said. “This can be a professional one, a high school one, or even just a movie if they want! Then all the current critics anonymously vote for which reviews they thought were best and those ones are chosen to fill any vacant spots left by leaving seniors. A team can have up to nine critics and one alternate and this year all those spots are filled here at Madison! I applied just before sophomore year so this is now my third year as a cappie, and this year I’m our team’s lead critic!”.
The buoyant show season is afloat for Mad Drama as they conclude their current fall play, Deadwood Dick, for potential cappie acting and technical nomination. Mad Drama would like to repeat their success from the previous school year when they received recognition for their play, “Much Ado About Nothing,” a nomination for Mary Ulses (’24) for “Best Female Lead in a Play,” and an award for Jonah Uffelman for “Best Comedic Actor in a Play.”