For the past few months my school has been preparing and rehearsing for its interpretation of the musical, The Lorax. Just last week they presented for both the school and for parents and others in the area. Here’s what I thought of the whole musical.
The school’s music teacher first announced auditions for the musical a few months after the school year started. There were quite a few people in my class that were chosen to play some of the parts. Because of rehearsals, a lot of people weren’t able to fulfill their other duties around the school, and other students had to help them fill in. However, this wasn’t too big of a deal since it was only at recess.
Every single day for the past few months, the cast had practices in the music room at lunch except for Fridays. Normally, during the week the music room is open for students to come in and practice. However, due to The Lorax, there was barely any time to come in to play and practice. In the final weeks of rehearsal, there were lots of props in the music room, and students that took part in the musical had to take time from class in order to practice for the performance. In addition to Wellness Week presentations being held, a lot of lessons were skipped and our class even didn’t have math for about three days in a row.
Since the musical was to be presented in the gym, they put down the stage and had all the lights and props there. We had a lot of skipped gym periods, and additionally our badminton team had to cancel quite a few practices. This made some people kind of frustrated how we didn’t get a chance to use the gym for the past few weeks.
When the final presentation did come it felt kind of strange to think that it was all put together of the course of several months. Some people forgot their lines and there were very few props. The only live music was one of the teachers playing guitar, but the rest of the music was played by speaker. In the end though I think they were able to convey the message of The Lorax anyways, so I guess that’s the most important part.
Overall, the play wasn’t half bad, but I definitely don’t think it was worth all the extra time and effort that was put into the musical. If they were to perform another musical later on I would definitely suggest planning their schedule a lot better.