Big, jaunty musical pieces with wild song and dance mix with an epic love story and rescue mission that takes a faithful lover all the way into the underworld in a highly ambitious Chaparral High School theater production.
Bobcat Theater is staging Hadestown, a new teen edition of a Broadway hit that infuses Greek myth with New Orleans style jazz in a folk opera.
Shows are scheduled Nov. 7 and 8 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 9 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 and available at https://chaparralhighschoolbobcatdrama.ludus.com/index.php
The Chaparral Bobcat Drama department is a Gold Honor Troupe. They are among the first high schools in Texas to stage Hadestown: Teen Edition.
It is also the group’s first production that features live musicians from the school orchestra and contribution from the choir and dance departments.
Lameika Boulding, a junior, has the large responsibility of stage manager for the musical. She explained a feeling of excitement, tinged with nervousness going into the final week of rehearsal.
“The most fun part is that it’s a Broadway show, and it’s always been a dream of mine to be stage manager for a big show so just the fact that I get to be a part of it is amazing,” she said.
“At the beginning, it was a lot of intense work on learning the music and the harmony and building the set. Later in the show, putting it together was difficult because it was like taking pieces from different puzzles and trying to put it together. They have come a long way and it’s looking really good.”
Zachary Repine, a junior, plays the role of Orpheus, who spends much of the story courting on a journey to rescue his lady love. He also does a lot of singing, which for the All-State Choir member, is a big part of the fun. The songs, though, do challenge his considerable range.
“I can’t dance, really. I’m a big, awkward guy,” he said of his character. “I don’t really do much. He’s always the one to rebel. He wants to bring the world back into tune. I’ve read a lot into this. It’s really cool.”
An accomplished singer, Repine has sung Tenor 1 and Tenor 2 in productions before. For this character, he is singing Counter Tenor, a kind of hybrid part.
“It’s a great love story. I’m happy we have lots of shows and I get to sing it again and again. I just like to be with everyone. The energy is always up. It’s a really challenging show. It’s all music. It was originally an opera.”
Junior Amani Mitchell plays the role of Eurydice, an impoverished, realistic young girl pursued by the idealistic Orpheus.
“I think it’s fun to do so many different things with my voice and show different emotions on stage,” she said. The musical contains more than 30 songs.
“I love meeting new people and making new friends,” she said. “I like this experience a lot.”
In addition to following the courtship of Eurydice and Orpheus, the audience will enjoy the troubled romance between the married Hades and Persephone, long separated by the king of the underworld.
“They are separated for so long … and they forget how much they love each other,” Mitchell said. The culmination of both love stories is something audiences will have to see for themselves.
“It’s pretty cool,” she said of the musical experience. “Singing and dancing at the same time is hard.”
With so much happening in the underworld and the “above world,” including fantastical spiritual beings providing their own influences, the narrator, Hermes, is a hugely critical role.
Slickly dressed in a sparkly grey suit and matching shoes, the deep-voiced senior Gionni Calzado moves the action along in song and narration.
“There’s a lot going on and I tell the story I’ve lived over and over again on a loop,” he said. “As Hermes, I tell the story and watch it unfold.”
“His vibe, his dynamic,” he said, fits a lot of his actual personality. “It’s fun. I get to witness the story. It’s great. I think we’re going to break a leg.”
“It’s going to be thrilling,” said the excited, in character Repine. “I don’t think the audience is ready. It’s going to look really good.”
Take a look at our photo gallery from a recent rehearsal: https://www.flickr.com/photos/killeenisd/albums/72177720321633333
During the same week, Ellison High School Theater is producing Freaky Friday, a musical based on the novel. It is scheduled Nov. 7 and 9 at 7 p.m. and Nov. 10 at 2 p.m. in the EHS auditorium.
