For those of you who did not know, Oakmont’s drama program performed Footloose this past week! And boy was it very, very chaotic. With times and dates of performances being changed due to unforeseen amounts of snow and probably lots of things going on behind the scenes, they still executed 3 shows to the very best of their abilities! And now we take a look inside of how much they all work to be able to perform such an astounding show for us!
To be able to understand how hard the cast of Footloose has worked for this, let’s take a look into the rehearsal schedule. First, the rehearsals began in the first week of January and they ran on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, every week since then. Each rehearsal was 2 hours from 2:30-4:30 and some of the cast then had sports or events after these musical rehearsals as well! Tech week is even more intense, the week right before Footloose goes live for their shows. Tech week consists of rehearsals on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, with times of 2-5 on Monday and Friday and 2-9 on Tuesday and Wednesday. Cast members say that tech week was incredibly productive and overall contributed heavily to the great success of the musical. And without a doubt, the call for show days is 2 hours earlier than their performances! “Good riddance” – Anonymous, to the ending of the musical. There was no comment from other cast members.
Now as we all should know, school was canceled for a snow day on Thursday, one of the scheduled dates for a
performance. As a result, the cast performed on Wednesday at an earlier time than previously scheduled, and then
twice on Friday. As Ms. LeBlanc stated, “It was incredibly stressful to reorganize dates for the snow day and to make sure everybody left Wednesday night.” And anyone could imagine why, when planning something for months only for a sudden snow storm to nearly cancel and disrupt everything the cast and directors had worked so hard for. Showings on Friday were at 5pm and then again at 8pm, with cast members saying their last show, that 8:00 showing, was the best and a very happy ending to the musical. Cast members also say they believe it would’ve been better had there been more time in between shows, to allow for things to go even smoother and for them to get more rest and pauses before immediately going to perform once again.
Regardless of these many problems and issues relating to the push-back of each show, the musical overall went incredibly well and was very enjoyed and loved by the audience. With full auditoriums or nearly full at every performance, the cast executed each performance very well even though on that last day, Friday, there were many tired performers. With stunning characters played by starring roles Blake Ross, Lana Carbonneau, Ryan Mayne and Molly McDaniel, and with Willa Olshan, Audrey Lavenski, Chloe Kruse, Jonny Currie, Persephone Panageotes and many, many more, the cast leaves a mark on the crowd who was
lucky enough to see a performance. Seniors Ryan Mayne, Molly McDaniel and Jonny Currie had outstanding performances and will be missed greatly next year but leave their mark on the program. Ms. LeBlanc had some things to say about the students themselves. As she says, “The students worked super hard. There was a lot of dancing to learn and everyone had fun!” Everything she said was very positive and there were only good things to say about the cast of Footloose, so props to them for a fantastic show and performance!
