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Toward the end of April, the NS drama department will be putting on the musical Beauty and the Beast. Due to COVID complications, there were doubts that a musical could even be performed in the traditional way. At one point, plans were made to create a video production rather than a live show. Currently, the department is hoping they will be able to perform live.
Practicing with a large group of people may pose some concerns for those distance learning due to the risk of exposure to COVID. For senior Harrison Cook (playing the Beast), who has been learning remotely due to health concerns for his family members, practicing in-person presents less of a concern because of the COVID precautions being taken.
“Working with Mr. Barlow… of all of the teachers that I’ve heard about; he’s been the most careful,” Cook said. “He makes sure people are wearing their masks correctly, he makes sure people are being careful, he makes sure people are staying far away from each other.”
Barlow and the cast members are excited that they will be able to have a real performance, and they see important reasons for that.
According to senior Kaje Nielsen, who is playing Gaston, the musical teaches students a lot more than how to act, sing and memorize lines. It teaches social skills that are beneficial throughout the rest of your life.
“I think that musicals can have a really profound impact on people in ways that maybe some other activities can’t,” Nielsen said. “The good thing about drama especially…is that you really learn social skills there more than anything else. If you have the nerve to get up and sing a solo in front of an auditorium full of people, then things like applying for a job and talking to a boss isn’t nearly as scary as it used to be.”
Though preparing and producing a musical is highly beneficial, it is a challenge. Putting together a musical in a year affected by a pandemic is increasingly complicated.
“Every musical, I think, is its own unique challenge, ” said NS drama teacher Alex Barlow. “This musical would be enough to do on its own, and doing it during COVID maybe is a very bold idea. But, I’m always hoping for the best. I think it’s important to still fight for the opportunity for them to perform and try to persist past the challenges.”
For Kylee Davis, who earned the lead role of Belle, one of the differences between this year’s musical and the ones she has been in before is the nature of her character. Playing Belle, a Disney Princess, is a much different task than playing the more gender-neutral roles she has previously filled.
“It’s going to be kind of different having to play this Disney Princess when last year I played this obnoxious, flamboyant gorilla,” Davis said. “The year before I sold newspapers, and the year before that, I was a hobo.”
Despite the challenge, she is excited to have been assigned the role.
“Beauty and the Beast is like one of my favorite movies as a kid, ” Davis said. “It’s like my senior year, so being able to get like the leading role was really exciting for me because like it’s like: ‘Yay, I’m going out with a bang.’”
Though there is a lot of hard work involved in creating a musical, all of the work and time put into it can be well worth it when it comes time to perform.
“It’s kind of like going on a vacation in the sense that you have to work pretty hard to go on a vacation, ” Nielsen said. “You’ve got to save up your money, you’ve got to book your rooms and all that, and it probably takes months of work to go somewhere like Disney World. But when you get there, you’re like, alright, that was all worth it.”
Producing a spectacle as complex as a musical is no simple feat. Learning the music, dances, and fabricating other elements such as costumes, props and sets, takes a lot of time. Rehearsals occur multiple times a week and can run between two and three hours each. To senior Kylee Davis, the time spent on the musical is worth it because of everything gained and learned during the process.
“I love to do this kind of stuff and especially this show because it’s been like my favorite show since I was a little kid, ” Davis said. “When everybody comes together to learn the music and the dance, it’s just a lot of fun, and when you walk away from it, you kind of look back, and you think, ‘man, that was a really fun time in my life.’ Even though it was a lot of hard work and time consuming, it’s totally worth it.”
The relationships formed through the musical because of all the time that is spent together are one of the things that make people do theater. A common problem for remote learners is, however, because there is less interaction with people, it is easy to fall out of contact.
“They’re a little bit less fun than they normally are, but they are still really fun, people are still friendly, it’s still fun to talk to people,” Cook said. “It’s just like talking to one of the teachers from elementary school or something, I imagine. You remember them, and it seems like they were huge in your life, but to them, you were kind of just another student, maybe you were more than that, but, it’s that kind of thing where you feel like there should be some connection and they kind of just don’t. So the rehearsal part, learning the lines, singing the songs, all that is still, it’s not any harder or easier, but, you know, it’s different.”
