Is there a possibility for a spring musical this year?

Yes, we’re going to do a one act, so it’s a short one hour musical. It’s kind of silly—it’s a fun little melodrama called “No, No, a Million Times No!” and it’s a chance for the hardcore drama kids to perform before the year ends. We’re gonna roll out auditions over the next couple of weeks, so we’ll be rehearsing and recording with the goal of having something by the first weekend in June. If we can do something live via Zoom, we will. I’d say we’re making lemonade out of lemons.

What are non-acting roles going to look like this year?

There is a Technical Theater class this semester, so all the design work that they practice within that class is focused on this play and its time period. They’re learning about what melodrama is, and we’ve already started with costume. We have to be very careful with money this year because we lost a lot when the spring musical was canceled last year. That being said, we may be building something for the background. Not every student has a device that lets you do a virtual background, so we might just make everybody something, like a poster, that they can hang behind them.

Once you have your cast of characters, how do you think rehearsals are going to work? 

It’s going to be smaller than the regular musical with less rehearsals. The fall play happens in conjunction with the theater production class, but the spring musical is done completely after school. It’s like adding a ninth period to your day. This year, we’re doing rehearsals for an hour three days a week. It’s definitely smaller than we’ve done in the past, but I felt it was really important to offer the drama students something that they can kind of grab hold of.

How is the music side of the musical going to work?

One of the things that makes this particularly challenging is that I can’t have an orchestra. The reason why I picked this show was that it’s something that I did a long time ago,  so I can actually play the piano for the musical parts because I’ve had to learn it before. All performing arts are really difficult in this environment, but music is very challenging because, as you probably figured out after six months of Zoom, there’s a lag. So I’ll be recording the piano, and then sending it to the students so that they can sing. 

Do you have any plans in place for the Liberty community to view it?

One of the methods I have is called SchoolTube. It’s like YouTube, but I created a huge page for Patriot Players. We put Puppet Macbeth there, and we’ll put whatever we do this spring there as well. It’s awesome. The link is under Student Life on the main page for Liberty High School, and it goes right to Puppet Macbeth so you can see it.