Bonneville High Musical Scenes Fall 2020
During this pandemic, Bonneville had to shut down Into The Wood that was in Mar. 2020. This year’s fall show was going to be Anything Goes, but the school had to cancel the show due to COVID-19. So the Play Productions class performed nine, five-to-ten minute musical scenes from different musicals. The Musical Scenes included: Cinderella, Little Women, Sweeny Todd, Chicago, The King and I, Hello Dolly, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and Anything Goes.
Theatre President and Senior Lisa Fuller said, “We all got assigned to musical scenes by our teacher Mr. Gerrard with the roles and responsibilities. I was assigned into the Chicago scene and I was the choreographer for it. We had a couple weeks to get it all together, fully blocked, choreographed, and memorized.” As Fuller said, the students directed and choreographed the scenes. That was incredible.
During the performance, there were technical difficulties with the sound and music. The mics were too quiet compared to the music at the beginning, The music was controlled on an iPad and the music quality was not the best. After about two scenes, they fixed it up and it was all good after that.
I was most impressed with cast members during a technical difficulty in the Scarlet Pimpernel scene. During the scene the music cut out. The cast did really funny improv while the crew in the booth was trying to fix everything. It made the experience more enjoyable and less worrisome for the cast members.
The singing in each scene was wonderful! They all had good tone quality, mostly good diction, and portrayed their characters well. It was only the mics that made them more quiet. The students could have done better projection with their voices to make them more heard. For the students to do the music directing and directing, I thought it was like they had a “real” music director directing their singing. But no, it was the students that did basically the whole thing!
Acting was one of the strong suits in most of these scenes. Every scene, every student portrayed their characters as the actual person and didn’t sound like a computer. They all did a good job being someone else and making it entertaining.
The one scene that impressed me and some others the most was the scene from Chicago. Senior Jenna Ashbridge said, “My favorite scene was Chicgo hands down. The music, costumes, and choreography were outstanding!” I totally agree with Ashbridge.
The Chicago scene was wonderful. It was like watching a real Broadway show, it was so good. They had great singing, the choreography was unbelievable, the acting made everything interesting, and so much more. I was really impressed with the girls in that scene.
Now of course, this was during a pandemic. Due to COVID-19, everyone had to wear a mask over their nose. Only the cast members were allowed to take their masks off during their scene, but had to put them back on after.
The audience was composed of those specially invited by cast members or Mr. Gerrard.They had to scan a QR code to get the program. They had to stay around six feet apart unless they were in a social bubble or immediate family while wearing a mask over their nose and mouth the whole time.
The audience and the cast members did a pretty good job with the guidelines. From what I observed, the audience members had their masks on the whole time, unless they needed a drink of water or something. The cast members did their part and put their masks on right as they got off stage.
Even with the COVID thing going on, it was a pretty enjoyable experience for the audience. I was pretty surprised with how the students basically did everything, and only having a month to get it done. As a theatre kid myself, I miss performing and seeing other performances. As senior Michelle Frey said, “I’ve missed performing so much and I also realized how much I’ve missed watching others perform. I hope we get to do an actual show this spring!”
