Q: What’s your position in running this spring musical?

A:I am the assistant spring musical director as well as the music director.

Q: What is the musical this year?

A:The musical here is Frozen.

Q: Is there a way for students to be involved in the decision making process?

A:We always like to hear what kids like and their ideas. It’s more so we can come up with what the show is and then when it comes time to, we think of blocking and with how we stage things, some of the design aspects. Then, we start to look at student leadership and student student ideas. I know from the vocal side of things, I have students come in knowing the music and then we get to explore it a little bit. So that way it kind of makes it their own. There’s always student creative opportunities within the show. We have plenty of opportunities for painting and design aspects on stage. I know that Mr. Cook works really closely with the pit to make sure that students are adding musicianship to the pit music. 
 As long as kids are super excited and super ready to share their ideas, we take it and run with it.

Q:What restrictions do you have when it comes to choosing the musical?

A:We have to get approved by this school administration. 
We have to take a look at shows and first of all, are they appropriate for our student body and appropriate for our school? But we also kind of have to take a look at what is going to best represent our student population and our students, like as performers. So when we’re thinking of musicals, we want to highlight students that like they’re student voices; we want to highlight our crew. 
Oh my gosh, I love our crew so, so much, and I want to be able to highlight their talents. We try to keep all of those things in mind when picking a show, and then we start to come up with our broader vision and start to narrow that in as we approach this time of year.

Q:What musicals do you hope you can do in the future?

A:
Oh, my gosh, the list is so long. Some newer musicals that have been more recently released, I would love to do the HadesTown Teen Edition. It’s my favorite show. 
I would love to take on shows like Phantom of the Opera. I’d love to bring Cinderella to the stage at some point. I have directed that show before, and it is just such a beautiful show. 
Something a little crazy at some point, I would love to do Jekyll and Hyde. It’s a really cool show and the way you can use the lighting effects to show how one person, either you can do it one way or two ways. 
One person can be both Jekyll and Hyde, or you can have two different people and show how that transformation happens. I would love to do that show at some point.

Q: Are there any musicals you wanted to do, but haven’t been able to?

A: This year we looked at several different shows. I promise you we changed it. Probably four different times. 
Some shows that we looked at and just decided not to do were Big Fish and Little Shop of Horrors. We also looked at Once Upon a mattress. 
So those could be future options at some point. But we just decided that we wanted to bring a little bit of Disney Magic to the stage this year.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

A:Yes, we will be hosting auditions before the end of the semester. Auditions will be Dec. 15 and 16. 
Materials will be available in the choir Room and then if you’re interested in crew or Pitt, we’ll also have information down in the choir room for those individuals that are interested.