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For the first time in NS history, the drama department brought home the award for best musical in the state of Utah in all classifications for their performance of Amélie this fall.
Before receiving the award, the cast performed a five-minute segment of Amélie for the Utah High School Musical Theatre Awards (UHSMTA) at the Eccles Theater on May 4. Director Alex Barlow also won best director, and lead actors sophomore Ethan Mendicino and senior Adelay Stavros were nominated for best actor and actress respectively.
“I would say it’s unbelievable, but it’s not,” Stavros said. “We work really hard, and it’s so rewarding.”
The UHSMTA had roughly sixty other schools around the state competing for best musical. The UHSMTA sends judges to watch one of the full musical performances and give feedback on the performance.
“It was a really cool experience because these judges are hardcore theater people,” Barlow said. “To get kudos from people who know what they’re talking about is always really nice.”
In total the NS drama department was nominated for nine awards.
“I try to enter every year and normally you get a couple nominations,” Barlow said. “In this case we got nine, which was really, really awesome.”
Mendicino recounted his experience finding out about his nomination as best actor.
“Honestly, my words could not express that moment I found out [I was nominated],” Mendicino said, “It was incredible and something I never expected.”
Stavros also expressed her excitement with her nomination and performance.
“That has been my goal for years and I finally did [it],” Stavros said.
Due to the five-minute time constraint on their performance, directors and students worked to cut the play down to something that would tell the story of Amélie while only being a short segment of the production.
“We ended up picking a few of the very last songs,” Barlow said. “It’s probably the best, most impactful part of the show.”
Amélie proved to be especially hard to cut.
“It’s hard because a lot of these shows have these really big show stopping production numbers and Amélie just doesn’t really have that,” Barlow said.
After the cuts were made, students practiced the show many times perfecting every detail that they could.
“We would just keep running it and running it until it was perfected,” Stavros said. “We actually added choreography into ‘Stay’.”
The experience that the students have at the Eccles Theater is very different from the experience that they have performing here at NS.
“There is like 3,000 people,” Stavros said, “and the environment is full of people who love theater so it’s really energetic when you’re there.”
Stavros talked about what it was like to be on the stage in the Eccles Theater.
“For me it felt like one step closer to a dream that I’ve had,” Stavros said. “The minute you step out onto [the stage], there’s nothing like it. It just felt like a world of my dreams to be there.”
Mendicino shared about how he felt after the performance.
“[Amélie] means a lot to many people,” Mendicino said. “That final performance felt like a very good way to pay an homage.”
Through hard work and determination, the NS drama department has become the only 3A department to win
“It just shows that coming from a small school doesn’t define what you can do,” Stavros said, “anything is possible if you have heart.”
