Last week, ACP’s Knights on Stages, known on campus as KOS (pronounced chaos), performed their latest production, “Oz”, an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. KOS’s “Oz” follows the journey of a young girl named Beth, who is still grieving over the loss of her sister.

Beth (Andrea Linder, 12) travels through the land of “Oz” and with the help of the Tin Man (Sam Rojas, 12), the Scarecrow (Devon Baggot, 12), and the Cowardly Lion (Bridge T. Bach, 12) learns how to cope with her sister’s death.

Sam Rojas, who portrayed the Tin Man, agreed to a quick interview with The Knight Times to tell us more about “Oz”. Sam, a senior at Erie, has been in KOS for two years and will be attending ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and Arts, majoring in acting. Here’s what Sam had to say:

Q: What did you find difficult and easy about portraying the Tin Man?

A: I found that the most difficult thing about the Tin Man was portraying his robotic mannerisms without being too stiff, but the easiest thing about portraying him was developing his personality. In this play, he was pretty mean, and through voice and dialogue I was able to portray that.

Q: What did you do to get in character?

A: To get into character, I would go over my lines in the Tin Man’s voice and avoid any distractions. I find that isolating myself from conversations with others before rehearsals and performances helps me focus and prevents me from becoming stressed out.

Q: What was your favorite part? What did you enjoy the most?

A: My favorite part was getting to work with and become closer to the people on set for rehearsals. Something else I enjoyed was coming in before each performance and getting to chat with the cast and crew for a bit before we had to get into work mode.

Q: How long did you rehearse for this production?

A: For this production, we rehearsed a lot less than usual due to COVID. We usually would start working on productions early on in the year, but because of the late start we had for school, we were left with only about a week to rehearse.

Q: Was is difficult adjusting your performance to fit COVID guidelines? 

A: It was a little difficult to adjust the performance to fit COVID guidelines, but we managed nonetheless! We were only able to audition within our Company theatre class and the tech crew was really small compared to other productions. Because we weren’t able to rehearse outside of school, we only rehearsed during our theatre class and some people had to be pulled from other classes.

Q: What is one character you aspire to play in a production one day?

A: A couple of characters I aspire to play in a production some day are either Sweeney Todd or Mrs. Lovett from “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, or the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland.

Thank you so much to Sam for taking the time to give us a little insight into the behind the scenes of KOS and their latest production, “Oz”. To all of our KOS seniors, ACP wishes you the best in your future endeavors. Congratulations on a performance well done!