he middle school musical this year will be like no other. The cast, theater teacher Meleesa Wyatt and other contributors have written and produced the performance for this spring.
“Improvising and improvising and improvising, and then writing it down and then memorizing it,” Wyatt said.
The musical will occur in Founders Hall at UPrep, on Thursday, May 9.
The name, after much debate, is, “Once Upon a Story.”
This year there are only eight cast members.
The musical is a variety of scenes from various musicals and dance numbers from other professional performances.
The basic storyline is the arc of a story using a song, which means it has happy parts and sadder parts. The story rises and falls just like life.
“You start off happy. You have a conflict somewhere,” seventh grade cast member Chloé Christofferson-Jackson said.
To her, the musical is hard work for the actors and the contributing counterparts.
“Just like any other class, it takes time and work,” Christofferson-Jackson said.
Even before the script was written, the musical had a guiding direction. To Wyatt it was more of a philosophy that pushed the ideas for the musical forward.
“[Good storylines for a musical] are tapping into those things that happen to all of us,” Wyatt said.
Marina Christopher is the musical director for the musical this year. She is in her first year as a teacher at UPrep and aids the musical by helping the cast learn the songs. Just like Wyatt, she helped pick songs and write the script.
“The commitment to the scene, the emotion is most important,” Christopher said.
Wyatt has taught at UPrep for 25 years and will retire after this year’s performances.
“I just want to leave the students and the audience with a desire to do it again,” Wyatt said. “So everybody’s leaning forward in their seats because they want to know more.”