Elite high school theatre makes its return to Regioplis-NotreDame Catholic High School this week. The schools’ arts department is presenting Disney’s “High School Musical”.
It’s been a couple of years since Regi last offered any kind of theatrical production.
This is the school’s biggest production of the year with months of preparation. A mid-day Wednesday performance for some elementary school students that kicked things off.
Emily Clark plays Gabriella Montez one of the leading roles. She says it was amazing to finally perform in front of an audience and get their feedback.
“We have such great energy,” said Clark. “And now we know what’s it’s like to have a really good audience reaction.”
Clark says it takes a whole team pulling together to make the production a success.
“A lot of times you think it’s just the leads that do all the work. The ensemble is probably the much more important part of the group. When you have a good ensemble, you’ve got that good base and it’s going to be a good show,” Clark told Global Kingston.
Noah Salomons plays Troy Bolton, the male lead in the production, and says it’s been a long but worthwhile road to perform in front of a live audience.
“Auditions were in December or January, and we’ve been working at it since. We’ve had a couple pitfalls but I think it’s turned-out really well and the hard work has really paid off,” said Salomons.
Salomons says the pandemic made it preparing hard but is philosophical about the experience.
“We had about a month where we had to be doing singing rehearsal on-line and that’s tough because you can’t hear anyone else and you don’t know what’s going on on the other end of the camera,” said Salomons. “We got out of that as soon as we could and we made a lot of progress.”
In total nearly 75 people worked on the production, including an 8 piece orchestra.
Performances of “High School Musical” continue until Saturday June 4.