Production of Seussical the Musical Wins Award

Providence High Arts Production of Seussical the Musical Wins Jerry Herman Award

By dominic cAtrAmBone, Phs theAtre Arts co-director

Over two weekends in April, Providence High Arts presented its spring musical production of Seussical the Musical to the community. Combining characters and locations from over 15 of the legendary Dr. Seuss’ stories, Seussical brings to life a young boy’s imagination and his journey to discover his voice. With the help of such beloved characters as Horton the Elephant, Gertrude McFuzz, Mayzie LaBird, and the Cat in the Hat, JoJo learns that “a person’s a person, no matter how small.” A cast of 61 students, rehearsing over the span of three months, and a crew of another half dozen put an incredible amount of time, energy and heart into this production…and it showed! The musical played to six sold-out audiences and, for the first time ever, our students had the privilege of presenting an on-campus field trip show for neighboring feeder schools! 190 chaperones and students, ranging from first to fifth grade, from St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Finbar joined us for a morning performance and cast Q&A. The theatre was abuzz with excitement and our students could not stop talking about how impactful it was to act as ambassadors for our school and Performing Arts program. Lastly, our production of Seussical was entered into a High School Musical Theatre Awards of Los Angeles competition, known as the Jerry Herman Awards. It is a regional competition run by the renowned Nederlander group and based at the Pantages Theatre. Adjudicators attended the performances and provided critique on a number of categories, both technical and performance-based. In our first year participating in this event, Providence received two nominations and one win, walking away with the 2016 Jerry Herman Award for Best Scenic Design! We were up against 35 other productions from 32 different schools, most of which have much larger budgets and far more advanced facilities than our little theatre...aka the old gym! If only we had a legitimate stateof-the-art space...imagine what we could do! Two of the cast members, Tyler Bridges ‘18 and Margaret Staedler ‘16, had the honor of competing for the Best Actor and Best Actress categories on stage at the Pantages. They took part in a weekend full of auditions and rehearsals and were fantastic as they performed in the opening and closing numbers of the entire show. Though our crew did not win the Best Technical Crew category for which they were nominated, they represented us well and still had the recognition of a job well done among a sea of other schools. It was an all-around wonderful experience for our students and a thrill to have our little corner by the freeway share some big-time spotlight in the high school arts scene. We plan to make this competition a mainstay for years to come and look forward to bringing home more trophies!

As always, thank you so much for your continued support and dedication to the arts and our students. And join us this year as we present our 2016-2017 Providence High Arts season, “Out of the Darkness, and Into the Light.”