Providence Hall High School theater department’s production of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” may very well have been cursed, said cast members.

“The Saturday after Fall Break, we put up our whole set on the stage, and then Sunday, the school flooded,” drama teacher and show director Jason Purdie said. “A portion of the school—especially the performing arts hall—was under three feet of water for 16 hours.” 

It was a week and a half before opening night and the gym floor and stage would take months to repair, so Purdie turned to the Herriman community for help to find an alternative location for the show. Cassie Lombardi, a parent volunteer for the production, reached out to Kayla Martin, the drama teacher at Fort Herriman Middle School, whom she had worked with once before.

“As I was reading her text, I was immediately reminded of the heartbreaking time of canceling my own shows because of the March 2020 Covid shutdown,” Martin said. “I knew I needed to make this work and started looking at my calendar. Those kids have worked so hard for weeks and deserve to perform.”

Martin postponed her own schedule and arranged for the PHHS cast to use FHMS’s stage and storage spaces for their rehearsals and performances.

“The theatre community is a loving and supportive community,” Martin said. “We are constantly sharing resources, ideas, people, props, costumes and equipment. Helping each other—especially when things are going horribly wrong—is what we do.” 

Opening night of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” was rescheduled from Nov. 7 to Nov. 21 and the 26 cast and crew members had two weeks to adjust to the new stage.

PHHS seniors who’ve been involved with previous school plays said misfortune is nothing new for PHHS theater productions.

“This isn’t the first time,” Anthony Lombardi, who played the role of Delphi in the show, said. “But compared to the previous shows that we've done, at least no one's hurt.”

Lombardi’s appendix burst one week before opening night of a PHHS show a few years ago. Another year, an actor was unable to perform when they were hit with painful kidney stones one hour before show time. One year, multiple people passed out on stage, and last year, an actor dislocated his knee during a performance. 

“Something happens every time,” Mia Beck, who played the role of McGonagall, said.

However, the experienced theater students were able to see the positive side of this year’s setback.

“I'd say the start was a curse, but we were able to turn it around and into something cool,” Boston Taylor, who played the role of Harry Potter, said. “We get to perform on a big stage. We've been given more time to really perfect our trade and really make this set look awesome and make sure that the magical effects are up to the Harry Potter standard.”

Jocelyne (JJ) Betts, who played Hermione in the show, said, “I feel super lucky because they gave us this opportunity to perform on a better stage and have more audience members.”

As a small charter school, PHHS’s performance space can only accommodate 90 audience members, so actors are normally limited in how many friends and family members they can invite to their shows. With the venue change, they had a 706 seat capacity each night.

The actors were glad to be able to invite more people to see the show. They were also excited to have more paying customers attend the show.

“With that many seats, we can get more funding, so this is also a great opportunity for us to gain profit—for once,” Beck said.