Humboldt Collegiate wowed Humboldt with another year of fantastic performances, this year with High School Musical on June 10-11.
This is the 10 year anniversary of the release of the original Disney channel movie. After trying to avoid it for 10 years, the stellar performance makes me want to go see the movie.
Dawson Keller and Jalen Smith gave wonderful singing and acting performances as Tony and Gabriella, a jock and a brainiac who are just trying to be themselves in a high school where everyone has a specific label.
The plot is very similar to Grease with a twist ending.
Tony and Gabriella meet during Christmas break on a ski trip and fall for each other, not realizing that they will be attending the same school come the new term.
Both encourage each other to try out for the school play, much to the dismay of the jock, brainiacs, and drama clics who want them to “stick to the status quo” of the school.
In the end, they basically destroy the clic world of high school and everyone becomes more open and honest about who they really are.
Glenda Lees, who is credited as ‘adult’ in the program, says it was a lot of hard work that started back when the curtain dropped on HCI’s last show.
“Many, many hours, many, many people, it is always so much fun. This is the fun part once we get to perform.”
By the end of January, Lees and the other ‘adult’ crew took the play to the students and started the process of auditions and learning lines and musical numbers.
Lees says putting on a musical is double the amount of work compared to a play since the musical numbers themselves takes a lot of work to mesh together.
Check out our photo gallery for more photos from the show.
For the bigger numbers, Lees says that students have to be in choir to get in the practice as well as learning their singing parts.
This was no problem for leads, Keller and Smith, since both have well trained musical pipes, as well as Emily Engele who accompanied them on piano for some numbers.
Keller is no stranger to the Humboldt performance world and enjoyed being up on stage as Tony, especially for the song, Get-cha Head in the Game, which had all the jocks singing together.
Keller says it was many hours working with Smith, Engele, and the rest of the cast.
His character was very relatable to his own life, says Keller, since he is just trying to show everyone who he really is.
“He’s trying to show them that there is much more under the skin and I’ve been trying to do that throughout my life. Just showing that he can be somebody that everybody says he can’t be.”
Smith has been working with singing coach, Rita Frank, for 12 years and loves singing. The musical numbers were songs she has known and has been singing along with for years so she was all too happy to taking on the role of Gabriella, a character much like herself.
“I just love singing, I sing all the time. So just being able to get up there and show what I can do and what everyone else can do is just an honour for me.”
For other students, Lees says there are many who refused to sing in front of audience years ago. Now, many have come a long way, says Lees, and are quite comfortable on stage.
There were many benefits of putting a musical together, says Lees, from the adrenaline high after a big group number to the fact that more people can be involved compared to a play.
“There is so many more things people can do when it’s a musical,” says Lees.
Seeing the joy in her students was the best part of putting the musical together. For some of her students, High School Musical was their only event throughout the year.
“For some students this is the thing that they live to do and to see the joy in all those students is amazing.”
