October brings ghosts and ghouls haunting through the halls of Fremont High School this year. The Thespian Society has decided to host their annual canned food drive on school grounds once again, but instead of a drive through like last year, they’ll be setting up a (kid friendly!) haunted house for anyone who wants to walk through – as long as they have a can.
“Every year, we do a canned food drive,” senior Kelley Lebahn, the president of Thespian Society, said. “This year, we wanted to change it up a bit. We used to go door to door and collect, but this year we are going to bring people in with a haunted house!”
Currently, the plan is to transform the theatre department into a haunted one, with different rooms having their own themes. Currently, the themes range from graveyards to haunted farms.
“We plan to have different hallways, different rooms, and different parts of the stage, to become different areas of the haunted house,” Lebahn said. “We’ll bring families through and give out candy at the end.”
The plan for the haunted house has proven difficult to figure out, with COVID regulations and worries about safety.
“All actors are going to be masked,” said Caitie Hays, the drama teacher. “We want to make sure that everyone who comes in is going to feel safe. We’ll also have the people handing out candy (at the end of the haunted house) wear gloves. We’ll probably also take groups in at a time and socially distance them.”
Thespian Society will be partnering up with two groups to make this happen, Lifehouse and Key Club. Thespian Society will set up the haunted house on their own, but will be working with Key Club to ‘scare’ the attendees. Then both clubs will donate the cans and nonperishable food to Lifehouse, which is an organization dedicated to helping those down on their luck and struggling to put food on the table.
“The members of Key Club have volunteered to help us out,” said Lebahn. “It’ll be Thespians building the house, while Key club members, Thespians, and anyone who wants Thespian points are welcome to volunteer as a character.”
Lebahn’s goal is to get 1,002 cans.
“When I started (trying to collect cans for the Thespian Society), we had gotten 1,000 cans,” LeBahn said. “Last year was a 1,001. My goal this year is 1,002 or more.”
Lebahn is extremely excited to be helping host this event, both for the fun parts like dressing up and the feeling of donating.
“I think that I’m most excited about dressing up, but I’m also really excited to count the cans at the end and bring that total,” LeBahn said, “because once you say the total, it’s really exciting to hear just how much we’re donating.”
This event will be taking place on Friday October 29th at 4:30 to 6:00 PM.
“I think it’s going to be fun,” Hays said. “It’s to support the theatre department. If you’ve got friends in the theatre department, come see them acting crazy and wild like theatre kids usually do. More than anything though, it’s for a good cause. It’s really good to start donating to places like Lifehouse to make sure that they have everything they need.”
