The Players of Springside School and Chestnut Hill Academy is a coordinate program that offers the students who become involved in its productions both a safe haven and a chance to reach the stars. In a busy and often confusing world, Players provides an opportunity for growth, with all of the trials that accompany it, and for success.

Players is a community that holds each student accountable and rewards each step into the often challenging and terrifying world of self-expression. They move beyond their former sense of themselves and reach for more.

Players produces two major productions a year, one in December—with rehearsals starting in September—and one at the beginning of May—with rehearsals starting in late January. If a musical director is available, the first show is a musical, with the second a straight play, either comedy or drama. The program seeks to expose students both as actors and crew (as well as audience) to a great variety of theatrical fare, from a number of different eras.

There are generally between 50 and 60 students involved in a production, from all four grades in both Upper Schools. A number of young women determine that they want to be part of what is traditionally thought of as a man's territory: the production crew. Very often, they eschew the idea of working on costumes or makeup or pushing a broom and take on the more hands-on construction work involved in the building of a set. They learn to work with power tools, they brave the climbing of scaffolding to hang, aim, and gel lights, they hammer with gusto, and in general take great pride in what they learn and accomplish.

As a member of Players—which means that students have auditioned for and won a part or are working backstage in any one of a number of different capacities—student actors are expected at each rehearsal (two evenings a week for an hour and a half each, and two hours on Sunday). All are expected to be prepared for each with lines appropriately learned and character work done outside of those rehearsals. Students involved in the technical aspects of a play's production meet an hour or more two afternoons a week and for four hours on Saturdays. They are expected to give their best toward their own performance and towards supporting the ensemble. These expectations are enforced not only by the directors but also by the students themselves, who take enormous pride in the work they do in Players. Whether onstage or backstage, time given to Players is carved out of a student's free time, and they are expected to balance their already busy academic, athletic, and social lives to accommodate that.

All of the hard work beforehand leads to rich and powerful performances and, from Tale of Two Cities to Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth, to Blood Wedding, to My Fair Lady, to Madwoman of Chaillot, to Murder in the Cathedral, to Museum, to Laramie Project, to Alice in Wonderland, the repertoire is never standard. It exposes students to far greater worlds of theatre than usual high school productions. With the bar set high for them, students aim for it and reach far beyond.

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