By Elliot Urbina and Matt Cabahug
This year’s BHS musical, School Of Rock, turned out to be a huge success with a 50% increase in crowds for this year’s show compared to the last few years, organizers said.
Teacher Lauren Farrell, the musical’s ticket director, said that people missed live theater and that “the last few years were impacted by COVID.” She thinks that because COVID caused a break in live theater, people have missed live theater causing an increase in sales.
Along with ticket sales, Farrell also helped with social media and advertising. Advertising was about the same this year with a couple of exceptions, she said. Organizers of the musical bought a billboard, put up a banner near the town green, and kept up with social media more than past years.
However, money and a post-COVID surge isn’t all that defines the musical’s success. The director, Mike Martone, along with the cast and set crew, all have a way that the musical was successful.
Martone believes that crowds are finally getting comfortable around large groups again after COVID, with most of everybody now having vaccines. And that it was just that good of a show. People went opening night and loved it so much that they’d recommend it to other people, which is shown with every show getting a bigger and bigger crowd, Martone said.
“It’s hard for me not to consider all of our shows a success,” Martone said. However he does believe that School of Rock has been one of the most successful in the past years, reaching numbers they haven’t got since before the pandemic.
Martone also talked about how he wasn’t sure how the cast would have turned out; He didn’t know who would and would have not auditioned for the show.
“School of Rock was a new school (musical) obviously… the styles felt more advanced, more colorful…” Said Lucas Dylan, who starred as the leading role, Dewy Finn. “During School of Rock I was able to be more colorful and have more personality than a captain from 1930 (in Anything Goes),”
Their hard work showed with every performance, with the crowd that attended getting bigger and bigger with every night, reaching over 500 people on the biggest nights.
While they were out on stage putting on an amazing show, the actors and actresses knew they weren’t just doing a show about kids joining a rock band. They all knew about the deeper meaning of the show.
“It’s ok to put yourself out there and rock out,” Said Ava Dombrowski (‘23) who rocked out as Sophie, one of the backup singers and dancers.
Whether it be singing the music, dancing in big numbers, or rocking out on their instruments, they all knew they were doing this to send a message to so many people in the community.
“Biggest message of this show is 1) recognize when teachers allow you to be who you are, and 2) for teachers to realize how important they are to students, why they do their job to create connections with them,” Martone said.
While everyone sees the cast up on stage, there is a lot going on backstage as well. There were difficult set pieces this year, but “we’re lucky with how small they are, but they get changed really quickly,” said Deck Chief, Greta Blaskovich.
Compared to last year, this set was a lot easier to move around. Last year’s musical, “Anything Goes,” included walls surrounding the sides of the stage, which made set changes hard for the stage crew. However, this year, they didn’t have that problem because there was a lot more space.
While stage crew might have been easier this year, tech was not. This year’s musical included a lot of microphones including cast, on-stage instruments, and the pit. On-stage instruments used wireless connectors from amps to instruments. Both of these things caused some minor problems because of interference issues.
However, everybody was so in tune with their roles this year that the crowd rarely ever noticed, if they noticed at all. The important thing was that with each rehearsal everybody got better and better, and really gave an amazing show that was also received really well.
