Starting on Nov. 17, Drama club will be selling tickets for their upcoming musical, “Hadestown” online, with lunch sales beginning Dec. 1. The musical will take place Dec. 11-13. The Dec. 13 date will have two performances- one at 7 p.m. with the normal cast, and one at 2 p.m. featuring the understudies.
“Two weeks before the show, we will have a table at lunches [to sell tickets],” Taylor Doverspike, Director of Theater Arts, said. “We also have an online platform that can be accessed through our Instagram or Facebook pages.”
This is Doverspike’s first year at North, and with that, this is her first production as the sponsor of drama club. In past years, there has been a play in the fall and a musical in the spring. For the first time in years, that is changing.
“We have a really big senior class this year, and we decided that we should use the people that we have the best way that we can,” senior Matthias Klestinski, who plays Orpheus, said. “We decided that we think it would be a good year, since we’re kind of starting fresh with the new director, to do two musicals for promotion reasons. Also, because we think that, with the people that we have, [we would have] two really good casts for two really good shows.”
The Masque Players will be putting on the “Teen Edition of Hadestown.” Length and slight content changes contrast it from the original production.
“It is the old mythology tale of Orpheus and Euridice and how they fall in love and face some hardships and the ending is a surprise, because you have to come see it,” Doverspike said. “I think the Teen Edition is just a little more condensed with some of the complexities within the script, but there isn’t that many differences.”
Much of the roughly 32 cast members and 30 crew members have participated in plays and musicals in the past, however, “Hadestown” is proving to be challenging for all involved. Not only do the technicians running sound have to keep up with the never-ending music, but the cast members are required to sing for long periods of time. Sophomore Dominic Morgan, who plays Hades, said. “So I would say the hardest part is that it’s pretty vocally demanding, and that can just be difficult.”
Two musicals is just the beginning of the changes Doverspike plans to make for the program. Next year, the drama club will go back to producing a play and a musical, but for this year, it’s “Hadestown” in the fall and “Mamma Mia” in the spring. Fundraisers, community outreach and increased social media activity are just some of the ways she plans to build the program.
“I think that she’s given the students a lot more creative liberties in creating the show than we have in the past,” Klestinski said. “She’s more willing to let us take the reins and be giving guidelines and rules, but us being able to kind of do whatever we want within those guidelines.”
Klestinski isn’t the only one who hopes these changes pay off.
“I think it’s going to be a show different than North has ever done before,” Doverspike said. “I want [the audience] to just kind of be mesmerized, I want it to stick with them. I want them to want to come back to see “Mamma Mia” in the spring, so I’m hoping it’s a good beginning.”
