On March 31-April 2, the drama club performed previews for fourth and eighth grade classes, as well as high school students, in order to prepare for the spring musical “The Little Mermaid,” running April 3-5.
“It prepares you because you have audiences before the actual show, but also because they’re different age ranges, [so] you can get those different responses and know how to react accordingly to whatever could happen out in the audience,” senior cast member Oliva Behe said.
The drama department started to work on the musical Jan. 13. The cast and crew work with one another to make sure everyone will be safe when sets are being moved, along with making sure that everything runs smoothly. Each cast and crew member along with the directors have their own favorite scenes.
“I really liked the bubbles; they were cool,” fourth grader Ackley Batten said.
The cast and crew go through tech week March 24-28. During this week, they spend evenings at the school practicing the show, along with getting fitted for their costumes.
“I think tech week is always equal parts frustration and fun, but that’s at the beginning of the week, and then that frustration converts into excitement because all the pieces start to fall together,” Assistant Drama Director Michelle Dugan said.
The directors spend countless hours working with one another to work on timing the scenes and working alongside with the pit orchestra to make sure the music and timing is aligned.
Even with spending long hours here everyday, the cast and crew continue to do it because it’s something they like to do.
“Every costume piece was made specifically for the show. We didn’t uphold anything but the cloaks from the last show, everything is new” head of costumes junior Owen Carmel said.
“The Little Mermaid” is known as a children’s movie and a Broadway musical. The directors took aspects from Broadway musicals and put them into this show.
“I thought the show was great my favorite part was Ursula’s ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls,’” eighth grader Axton Batton said.
“I think the Broadway show compared to the movie, if people are familiar with the movie, I feel like the Broadway show gives a little bit more backstory to Ursula,” Dugan said. “In the movie, she’s just the villain that we don’t know much about, except she’s the sister of Triton, and she’s mad that she’s not in charge.. The Broadway show added a song for Ursula, developed her character more, and that was fun to see a bit of a more complete character. I also like how they gave Scuttle his own number with the tap dancing seagulls, and Flounder has a number which is ‘She’s In Love’ with the mersisters, which is so funny. I noticed that Mr. Cossitor and I added it, but they added it for the Broadway show; the movie didn’t have it, so I really like the additions that they put on that are more appropriate for a Broadway show than on the movie.”
Making sure the scenes and music come together is something that the audience doesn’t understand. The directors spend hours making sure everything is right.
“The audience will not understand how much time and effort is put into getting that chase scene to look the way it looks. The chase scene is only like two and a half-three minutes, but Mr.Cossitor and I worked for two and a half hours to block that out, and then we rehearsed that chase scene,” Dugan said. “Probably a total of six hours total practicing it, timing it outright, timing it out with the pit, making sure that, once we added the props and the sets and everything, that it all works correctly, and then adding in the puppets and adding in our advanced dancers who are doing flippity flips all over the place, that kind of stuff. I think they’re going to love the chase scene. It’s very Tom and Jerry, cartoony chase, but they just will have no idea the amount of the time and the effort that was put into getting it to look that good”.
Christine Behe • Apr 7, 2025 at 9:28 pm
It was fantastic! Everyone was well prepared!