International Night - Backstage

Sofia Mang, Dhruv Singh, Caleb Smith, Grace Yang

In this episode, Host Grace Yang discusses the preparations behind International Night with the teachers, performers, and club leaders involved, honing in on their busy schedules, connections to the cultures represented and their hopes for the show. Listen on Spotify or Apple Music.

Grace Yang: International Night. An evening celebrating the different cultures at Northview with awe-inspiring performances, tickets that sell out every year, a packed auditorium, and delicious dishes from around the world. This is one of the most exciting nights at Northview, but many students are unaware of the time and effort that performers, sponsors, guests, and Kaleidoscope members put into making sure the event runs smoothly. Hello and welcome to Point of View, where we give students a place to listen, learn, and lean in. I'm Grace, and today I’ll be discussing preparations for International Night and what goes on behind the scenes.

Grace: Some of the principal contributors to International Night's success are the sponsors of the event, Mrs. Rogers and Dr. Hart.

Mrs. Rogers: Good morning. I'm Mrs. Rogers. I am the sponsor of Kaleidoscope club and Kaleidoscope club puts on International Night.

Grace: Kaleidoscope has put on the show almost since Northview’s founding.

Mrs. Rogers: I believe that International Night…it was going on when I first started at this school, I believe back in around 2006-2007, it may have started. I took over the club the 2013-2014 school year, and have been doing International Night since then and Dr. Sekman has been my right hand lady helping me with International Night.

Grace: They have supported the event every year and pour so much of their personal time into managing logistics and rehearsals.

Mrs. Rogers: Well preparing for it, I guess my favorite part is maybe auditions and then just working with the club officers to pull off the event and organize it. Perhaps the most difficult is just you know, being organized and then remembering all the little things that have to be done. And also just getting volunteers to do some of the things that are not as much fun like, you know, selling tickets, you know, working a table at the taste of cultures, that sort of thing.

Grace: The hard work pays off with a great performance that is put on every year.

Mrs. Rogers: I just hope it will provide a fun, fun evening that will be memorable and that will inspire them to be creative themselves and to appreciate the diversity that we have here at Northview and in our Johns Creek community and admire the talent of their peers.

Grace: Kaleidoscope is the club that runs international night.

Tvisha Pendyala: Hi, I'm Tvisha Pendyala, and I'm a senior.

Shruthi Balachander: Hi, my name is Shruthi Balachander and I'm a junior here at Northview and I'm the president of the Kaleidoscope Club.

Grace: Members are there for every rehearsal and they contribute to committees that organize different parts of the show so everything falls into place.

Tvisha: Well, we have committees so each person in leadership usually takes up a role for each committee and I've been an usher for every year that I was like in the club except last year, obviously because we were remote. And for ushering, since I'm the one that knows it the best, that's why I got the position really. Other than that, we don't just solely focus on the committee that we're assigned to or like the role we take, we are a really good team together. We will always help each other whenever we need it and if we have any general things that need to be discussed, we're down for it.

Shruthi: So my role includes overseeing everything from the committees that go into International Night, but also with the performers, rehearsals, and the night itself. So we have, especially leading up to the month of March and international night coming forward so soon, we've had a lot of monthly meetings with committees. My job is to split a lot of the members into committees and make sure that one is working on the paintings and the posters for International Night, the others are working on International Night Week activities, and the others are ushers and backstage committees for International Night itself so everything runs smoothly on the night of.

Grace: Kaleidoscope leaders and members have a lot of work and there are a lot of obstacles, but the process and end result are very rewarding.

Tvisha: Since it's like a really big group, right? Because you have your club members and you have the performers as well, so you have to manage both of them. Sometimes you forget that you have to meet with leadership on your own too. So it's just like constantly being aware of having to do different stuff to get to the end result. So it's just like, you forget stuff so it's kind of hard for that.

Shruthi: I think it's not easy because there's members who don't show up all the time, right? And there's not a continuation of everything and there's so many performers and groups and there’s so many logistics. Like, booking the auditorium itself is a big deal, booking the cafeteria and that is also such a big deal. But the tickets might actually be the hardest part because we at Northview are known to sell out of tickets super fast and it's really hard to get good show tickets. So that's why we were potentially considering a C show. And we're not sure if we will definitely or indefinitely have one because it's still up to how many tickets we buy and what all goes into it. But definitely, I think the performance itself and getting that all cohesively together, whether that was International Night auditions or whether it's right now, with getting all the groups to work with each other, that would definitely be the hardest part.

Grace: Each committee has different responsibilities. Each part of the show must be accounted for with people ushering, managing ticket sales, and everything else. And in the week before international night, everyone involved in the show has a packed schedule.

Shruthi: International Night rehearsals are known to go on forever. Like we practice until 10, 11 and it's just figuring out all the lighting, music, and how each group should transition. And as we know, the seniors always put on that great performance, because it's their year and there's a lot of members into that. So rehearsals are tiring, they're long, but it pays off because both the shows at the end run super smoothly. But we also have general meetings for the performers, figuring out what they're supposed to do when they're backstage and so yeah, it's long and tiring, but it pays off in the end.

Grace: Kaleidoscope is the backbone of international preparations and the members strive to put on a great show and share other cultures.

Tvisha: Since it's a cultural thing, I hope people can connect with their cultures there and have fun showcasing it. And it kind of inspires other people to showcase their cultures that aren't shown as much because like, obviously, Indians and Kpop, those two groups take up a lot of the time, right, which is great, because, obviously, I'm Indian, so I will enjoy it. But it's nice seeing the minority groups, even if it's Russian, like the Russian performances, like they're really nice to see. So I just hope more performers come out and the audience enjoys it, because it's really fun.

Shruthi: Um, so it's been two years since we've had International Night fully and really what I hope this year is that people feel a sense of enjoyment and appreciation for being able to be back in the auditorium, one, and being able to experience such a big night with so much diversity and culture, especially after everything that we've been through over the past few years. With, when we were a quarantine, I know a lot of movements came up and a lot of social issues came up. And I think this is a time we should be taking to really celebrate the positivity and culture and diversity and overlook our differences, then unity that brings us together. And I really hope that people not only see the effort that goes into this night, but they also see how much the value of culture is here at Johns Creek and Northview because it's such a big part of our identities and our societies.

Grace: Performers are the core of international night.

Jensi Perng: I'm Jensi Perng, and I'm the president of the Taiwanese Yo-Yo club.

Vedu Arya: I'm Vedu Arya. I'm a senior at Northview. And I'm performing with BBB or Big Bhangra Brand.

Sunny Park: Hi, my name is Sunny Park. I'm a senior at Northview. And I'm going to be in Dream High.

Grace: They share customs that are important to their backgrounds through instruments, dance, singing, and other arts and expose Northview students to cultures that many of their peers identify with.

Jensi: We're representing Taiwanese culture and our music choice is from Attack on Titan, so kind of Japanese culture as well. So I'm Taiwanese American, and I've been doing Taiwanese Yo-Yo for almost nine years now so it's been pretty long. And it's like, really fun and a great way to get to know people.

Vedu: So we generalize and say we represent Indian culture, right. But within Indian culture, there are multiple styles of dance. So this year, we actually went above and beyond and we’re performing new styles of dance. So we have Bhangra of course, we have Garba, we have Bollywood, we have Tollywood and we of course have Hip Hop as well.

Sunny: We're representing South Korea. I'm the president of KPOP Dance Club at our school so I do a lot of KPOP Dance and like, you know those kinds of performances as well.

Grace: Some of these clubs have a tradition of performing at International Night. For example, Taiwanese Yo-Yo usually performs as well as Dream High.

Jensi: So our club, I think, has been around for around six years and was started by another student. So I think with the exception of last year, this will be our fifth time at international night.

Vedu: So our group has performed before, we performed our sophomore year, so two years back. But the thing is, BBB isn't an official club or anything. It's just a friend group wanting to show off our culture. However, there is usually one Indian dance group every single year, that goes last at International Night and just, you know, performs and represents our culture.

Sunny: It was originally Korean seniors every year. But I guess this year, we're kind of changing it up. But yeah, every year.

Grace: Performers have to manage their schedules, spend hours practicing, and make decisions on the lighting and equipment they use.

Jensi: So our club meets every Wednesday, sometimes we meet over the weekends, as well. For the routine it usually takes me about two day but we tweak it when we meet up.

Vedu: So we have to perform at Beta Con as well, right and so we started practice, I think it was around December, or even November. Typically, we'll just go to one of our friend's house, he will host in their basement, or she'll host in their basement. And we'll just, you know, we'll just dance. Practices are usually pretty long, like just last Sunday, we were practicing and I was up till 3am at one of my friend's house. but yeah.

Sunny: I think it depends on the group. But I think for this one, because most of us are just doing the group is mainly just for, you know, seniors and just to have fun, we usually take up a little bit longer, I'm thinking maybe like four months. But that's only because we meet up maybe once a week, or maybe once every two weeks.

Grace: In the end, they're doing this to share a culture they're proud of and want the audience to enjoy.

Jensi: Well, we've worked really hard. So I guess like, as usual, we don't want any of the Yo-Yo’s to drop, and everything will go smoothly. There's this really cool part at the end, where we take a long pair of sticks, and we do some pretty cool tosses, so I want people to look forward to that.

Vedu: I guess one thing is that, since a lot of the underclassmen didn't get to experience International Night last year, is that it's okay to scream and shout and in fact, we encourage it. You know, we want the entire audience to get really hype while we're performing just so we know that you guys are having fun while we're also having fun performing.

Sunny: I hope you can see how much we've prepared for it. Obviously, not all of us are going to you know, be Kpop stars or, you know, going to be like these spectacular dancers. But yeah, I hope you guys can see how much fun we can have and like, you know, there's a taboo of Kpop and Kpop songs being very cringy. But I hope you guys can see past that and, you know, just see how Kpop can be fun and, you know, really enjoyable for lots of you know, diverse kinds of people.

Grace: The other side to international night is the Taste of Culture event. This is held in the cafeteria, where guests set up booths with food from the cultures they represent. This is made possible with the management of Ms. Hsu and Ms. Kim, two of Northview’s bilingual community liaisons. Parents, teachers, and other guests take time out of their busy schedules to prepare food from their home countries and give students a taste of authentic ethnic dishes. We usually have a few parents manning a Korean booth, showcasing food from the country that many of our students trace their lineages back to. Our very own Ms. Godbole and Mr. Hunter are in charge of a French booth, and the Nigerian Association always sets up a stand for Nigeria. Another crucial part to the success of International Night is the logistics behind everything. In order to control the stage lighting, make sure that the music and sound is done correctly, and that the entire show runs smoothly, Kaleidoscope teams up with the Northview drama department.

Mrs. Rogers: Oh well, we rely heavily on the drama department and they have wonderful experienced tech crews. So I contact Ms. Pieri and she recommends people for Stage Manager and lighting and sound.

Grace: All these factors come together to make international night unforgettable. Aside from showcasing culture around the world, the event gives Northview students and other people of the community something to remember and look forward to each year.

Shruthi: Recently actually I've also been seeing the promotion of Johns Creek High schools International Night and I was wondering the same thing about how much of a scope it has outside of the school. I think it really does have a lot because Northview’s international Night is known to schools around us like Lambert and Forsyth, because when I was in middle school, I remember coming and I wasn't even in high school.

Vedu: We want the audience to react how we reacted when we were the audience basically. When we were in middle school, and we were freshmen, we would run to the front of the audience, and we’d just, you know, start screaming and get really hype. And that's basically just what we want from the audience.

Grace: So this year, knowing all the hard work and time the performers, guests, Kaleidoscope, and teachers have put in. Let’s enjoy the show and let their efforts be known.

Shruthi: Definitely come watch international night! We have so much in store, the performances are gonna be great. But also join Kaleidoscope. I mean, it's a fun club. We do a lot of activities that relate to food and celebrating culture but we also talk about a lot of social issues and differences that arise because of culture and race and such. And so yeah, but come to International Night!

Grace: This concludes this episode of Point of View. Thank you so much for listening. For a transcript of this episode, head to the Point of View tab on our website, nhsmessenger.org, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at NHS Point of View for updates and new episodes. I'm your host, and this has been Point of View.