This year’s musical will be “Beauty and the Beast” and the cast list for the show came out in early September. The students in the theater program have already started building, rehearsing, and preparing to put on a fantastic show for all who go to see it.
“I’ll admit I was incredibly nervous but, I was mainly excited,” junior Akhil Raj said about being cast as Gaston. “It seemed like a really fun role to play and overall I’m really grateful for the opportunity.
Everyone cast in the show is excited to perform and is actively working hard, not only are the actors working hard during rehearsals, but the stage managers are too. The stage managers, with the help of other crew, create and build the sets for each scene for every show the theater program puts on. Senior Charlotte Medina is one of the stage managers and her role is overseeing the creation and building of the sets for the shows.
“Well, it is a hard job,” Medina said. “We have to figure out what we’re going to build and then we have to add designs to it and we have to make sure it actually fits in with the theme and time. It is a lot of hard work and sometimes we do have to do a lot of research for it.”
Jeremy Cooley is the new theater teacher at South Hills High and shared some thoughts about the upcoming production of Beauty and the Beast.
“I’m always nervous for shows,” Cooley said. “I personally wouldn’t have chosen Beauty and the Beast, It’s just a big show with a lot of moving parts. But from what I’ve seen with the way the program was run before I got here and with the students that are in the program, we have the right people to get the props and costumes and everything set so I’m nervous, but not worried.”
Even though theater may be a challenge for many, especially if they have multiple after-school activities or take rigourous classes, the thing that keeps most people in theater is being able to be a part of a group of people who all love the same thing. Many enjoy the experience of transporting the audience to an entirely different world. Senior Paige Connor who was cast as Belle feels this way about theater.
“My favorite part of acting is being able to be a part of a story that makes people feel really happy,” Connor said. “Especially because it’s Beauty and the Beast and that was my favorite as a kid so it meant a lot that I got to be in this one.”
