Story by Audrey Kashatus
BOONE, N.C. – Bright yellow and blue lights shine down on the Watauga High School auditorium. A couple of chairs, boxes and planks scatter the stage. Fifteen actors stand somberly, facing the audience.
“I remember exactly where I was when it happened,” they say forcefully in unison.
The Watauga High School Pioneer Playmakers are a group of theater students who write and produce a show for competition each year. In September 2024, they had settled on creating a show honoring the voices of Appalachian women across generations.
On Sept. 25, the students left school for the day, prepared to come back the next day and work on their production.
“We didn’t see them for 10 days,” Sarah Miller, the WHS co-theater director, said.
Wind whipped through the air, faster than it ever had before. The Watauga River reached a height of 13 feet, destroying everything in its path. Hours of rain created mudslides. The water came so fast. Hurricane Helene wiped through western North Carolina, leaving entire communities without access to power, food or water for days.
And – like so much in Watauga County – the Playmakers’ plans were blown out the window.
The Playmakers finally met again Oct. 3 – online via Google Meet. Only half of the cast was able to join due to lack of internet access.
The yearly theater competition season begins with the North Carolina Theatre Conference’s (NCTC) Regional High School Play Festival. The Playmakers were set to compete Nov. 1 at the regional competition in Shelby.
Despite their first round of competition being a mere 28 days away, the Playmakers collectively agreed they still wanted to attend and compete at regionals – but with a different show. Their idea shifted to tell three different stories of the tragedy Helene unleashed throughout western North Carolina.
When the Playmakers returned to school in person Oct. 8, they were able to find a haven in their theater. Walker said they spent their time writing and creating the show in every way they could, in person and online, to tell the story – their story – of Helene.
“Surge” was born.
Named for the surge of water the hurricane brought to the mountains, the play featured the stories of a grandmother, mother and daughter saving a local church; four siblings running a coffee shop they inherited from their mother; and a family that owns a local Christmas tree farm.
“It’s a generational show where every single person in the audience has a direct link to what’s going on on the stage,” Zach Walker, co-theater director at WHS, said.
Miller said the Playmakers wanted to ensure the script was as accurate as possible when describing the details of the storm. The cast used the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to research exact weather statistics.
Throughout the show, certain characters known as the reporters keep the timeline moving along by announcing the time of day, speed of the rivers and inches of rain fallen.
WHS junior Liliana Lemus portrays a young girl named Ivy, who lives with her mother and grandmother. Ivy and her mother’s contentious relationship shines through as they loudly argue on their way to help protect the church next door from the storm.
Shortly after Ivy and her family leave the stage, the reporters note the wind gusts as recorded on the major mountains in the state. Mount Mitchell and Grandfather Mountain both clocked gusts over 100 mph. These hurricane-force winds were later responsible for the widespread power outages and destruction across the mountains.
“Surge” was successful at the regional competition, earning a superior rating along with multiple other awards. The Playmakers won Excellence in Original Songwriting, Excellence in Directing, Outstanding Achievement in Acting by Rowan Tait, Outstanding Achievement in Ensemble Acting and Distinguished Play Audience Choice.
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M Quigley is a senior at Watauga High School and the lighting technician for “Surge.” They said throughout the show, a blue lighting wash shines over the stage to represent the influx of water in the mountains.
“I wanted to show the destruction of the water and be able to show also the healing that happened during the aftermath of [the storm],” Quigley said.
As the show goes on, the intensity builds. The audience sees inside the coffee shop as the storm worsens. As a window breaks and water floods in, the characters scream and scramble to safety, worried they’ll be trapped inside.
Clara Lappan plays Cecelia Shepherd, one of the siblings who own the shop. As the storm rages outside, Lappan’s character forces her siblings up on planks and blocks, trying to reach higher ground as the shop begins to flood.
The reporters flash on the stage and say the French Broad River flowed at a rate of 240,000 cubic feet per second at the peak of the storm.
Lemus’ character, Ivy, is boarded up inside the church next door with her mother and grandmother.
Ivy sings to distract from the roaring wind and rain. When the sounds of the storm begin to drown out her voice, Ivy’s mother and grandmother join in. The three women sing louder and louder until the storm forces them to stop. The stained glass windows shatter to the floor and they race to hide inside the church’s kitchen, away from the chaos.
Junior WHS student Ky Hogan plays Sudden, the youngest daughter of the Christmas tree farm family with a knack for rebellion. Sudden’s journey is one of the most intense portrayed in the show, detailing her separation from her family during the storm.
Sudden’s family is headed by her strong-armed father, Charles, played by Rowan Tait. Most concerned about saving the family’s only source of income, the Christmas trees, Charles ignores the family’s cries to protect the house from the storm.
Amid her family’s yells, Sudden heads to close the front door, which is rapidly letting in water, and is not seen inside the house again. Her family shouts and frantically searches for Sudden as the lights fade and the scene ends.
After being trapped outside of her house, Sudden finds herself swept away in a mudslide and crushed under a pile of branches and trees. Her screams fill the theater.
When her family finds her, she is buried under splintered trees completely limp and unconscious. Her father carries her off stage, as the audience falls into a stunned silence.
“It leaves the audience thinking, ‘Is she okay? Is she even alive?’” Hogan said. “Because that happened – people lost their lives in this hurricane.”
Helene was recently named the deadliest hurricane to hit the contiguous United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with over 200 confirmed fatalities.
Lemus and Hogan both recall performances when they could hear the sobs and gasps from the audience.
“I feel humbled that they would feel brave enough to write a story that requires them to relive the trauma of Helene every time we rehearse, every time we perform it,” Miller said.
The state-level competition, NCTC State High School Play Festival, was held at Greensboro College in late November. The Playmakers returned to Boone celebrating once again.
“Surge” won Excellence in Composition, the C.C. Lipscomb Award for Excellence in Directing, Distinguished Play Adjudicator’s Choice and Outstanding Achievement in Ensemble Theater.
“I don’t think we really had the objective to do this – to make someone feel this way, to get this score from the judges,” Walker said. “It was really just cathartic to come [to the theater], leave everything outside, but still deal with what’s going on.”
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For more than a minute, the audience holds its breath after Sudden is carried away. The silence persists, heavy and unrelenting, as the weight of the storm settles over the stage.
The reporters wander aimlessly around taking in the destruction as the blue lighting wash covers the stage.
“Roads became rivers, basements became bathtubs, lights became lanterns, bridges became barriers,” they said.
After the storm, the rebuilding and recovery began almost immediately.
The siblings’ coffee shop sustained damage—but beneath the broken glass and waterlogged floors, it still stood, ready to be rebuilt.
Ivy and her mother reconcile through their love for singing as they sweep the church floor.
And, almost 10 minutes after the audience last saw her, Sudden reappears, hobbling onto the stage with her father’s help. She’s alive, but she and her family will carry the memory of the mudslide with them forever.
“Surge” is a message written to the community, Quigley said. The Playmakers drew on their own experiences and stories to create the characters.
“This one is definitely one of the closest, tight knit groups that I’ve been part of because of what we’ve all experienced and what we’ve been through and how we’ve coped with it,” Lemus said.
Hogan said the process of creating “Surge” built a family out of the Playmakers because no matter what each of them experienced individually, they all lived through the same hurricane.
The WHS auditorium became a home for many of the Playmakers. Miller said the stage became a place for them to put their emotional feelings about Helene.
“It’s not just some random production we pulled out of thin air,” she said. “This happened to us.”
In late March, the Playmakers represented North Carolina at the national competition in Baltimore, Maryland, taking the stage for their final performance of “Surge.”
It was the most success Watauga High School has ever had at this level of competition. “Surge” won three All Star Acting and Composition awards for Ky Hogan, Clara Lappan and Liliana Lemus, as well as Best Original Play Concept and Excellence in Ensemble Acting.
Watauga was the only school of 18 awarded with the Excellence in Ensemble Acting.
“I think it’s so beautiful how we can share our community’s story with such a widespread audience,” Lemus said.
The final scene of “Surge” shows all of the characters together, helping one another recover from the storm. They’re singing “Down in the River to Pray,” a traditional folk hymn, as the lights fade.
The creation of “Surge” not only allowed the cast and crew to heal, but it also provided a space for the students and community to come together, supporting one another as they navigated their own paths toward recovery.
“I will never experience anything like this again,” Hogan said. “This has been the most beautiful experience that I’ve been a part of so far – ever – in my life.”
