Every year, the Campo choir puts together a musical for students, faculty, and the community to enjoy. This year, the musical was called The Prom. It followed the story of four Broadway stars trying to help a lesbian girl bring her girlfriend to prom while having to deal with a conservative PTA.
Senior Curtis Smith-Wilde, who played Barry, said that the musical preparations ran smoothly and that it was super fun and he’s super glad he did it, and he encourages people to try it out next year. When asked about challenges faced while preparing for the musical, he said, “One of the challenges was getting off book, just memorizing all the lines, it got difficult at some points and just getting all the music down and making sure I was prepared for having the orchestra being the backing track.” While talking about how he prepares for the musical, he said, “For me specifically, we get cast lists in September so from September to when rehearsals start in January it was a lot of just rehearsing the music, looking over the script, just finding the character. And then when rehearsals start it’s a lot more focused on getting off book and getting the dances down and helping the ensemble learn their music.”
Senior Abby Christensen played Emma Nolan in the Applebee's cast and has performed in 5 musicals prior to The Prom. She said she’s performed in, “Les Mis[érables], Cinderella, Newsies, West Side Story, and now The Prom.” She also feels like The Prom ran smoothly because they were well prepared and they had practiced and rehearsed many times. She talked about how she prepared, saying “We start rehearsals in January and they go on until March when we have our actual performances so for me, because I was a bigger role, I would have rehearsals every single day except Sunday’s… where we’d learn choreography, singing, dancing, and then on my own time I also had to practice a lot of lines to memorize them and practice my songs a lot, a lot of vocal rehearsals and stuff like that.” She thought the musical was fun and thinks that if they want, more people should come see it.
Senior Mia Polichio played Emma Nolan in the 7/11 cast of The Prom and said that she feels like the musical ran smoothly because everyone knew the importance of their role. Prior to The Prom, she “… was in Cinderella, in Newsies, and now in The Prom.” A challenge for Mia was juggling both her soccer commitments and her musical commitments. She said she learned the choreography and blocking either at the few rehearsals she was able to attend, or through friends and videos. But a success she felt she had was, “The character Emma, I could relate to her in my own way and I think that is what made it easy for me to portray her story.”
In these actors’ eyes, the musical ran smoothly and many people attended, making it a grand success.
