MANCHESTER – Members of the township high school drama club will bring the popular musical “Mamma Mia!” to the stage this weekend.
The musical will feature student performers in a production built around the music of the Swedish pop group ABBA in the Manchester Township High School auditorium. Multiple performances are scheduled across two days.
“Mamma Mia!” tells the story of a young woman trying to discover the identity of her father before her wedding, leading to a series of comedic misadventures and emotional moments set to some of ABBA’s best-known songs.
Last week The Manchester Times spoke with several individuals involved with the production during a rehearsal and observed the excitement and energy involved with bringing the musical to life.
Students were busy rehearsing their lines, adding props on stage and putting together sets.
Cast members moved around the stage practicing their dance moves while others received stage directions from their director, Krystyna Hubbard as well as support and instruction from the production’s choreographer, Kelly Bourke.
“We are prepping the audio and the set is still under construction,” Hubbard told The Manchester Times. “We have 34 cast members and seven or eight back stage crew. We auditioned at the end of November and then we started rehearsals in January. Our schedule calls for people not to be called in every day. We rehearse by scene.”
Hubbard reminded the cast that “yesterday we left off with the ‘Chiquitita’ scene.” Fans of the stage musical and the 2008 Mamma Mia! movie will recall that this scene involves the characters Rosie and Tanya cheering up their friend Donna. MTHS drama students Makayla Mullen, Meghan Wagner, and Ada Isaacs rehearsed that scene. Hubbard said they added some props in the form of “some ugly suitcases that were donated to us to use.”
Hubbard explained that the selection of the spring production starts with “looking at the cast that we have and who might be returning and seeing if we can fill the parts.”
She noted that the musical was a good mix of freshmen, sophomores, juniors and senior students. “Most of our company are seniors right now. Last year we had a lot of juniors.”
Hubbard added, “the kids have a little bit of input. They are very free to tell me and the staff what show they want. We’ve been trying to do ‘Little Shop (of Horrors)’ for years and they keep denying us and then there is the content of the show and what is popular right now and what kind of voices we are singing with. We did ‘Anastasia’ and that was a real serious show and we wanted to switch it up to something a bit more modern.”
For student Albany Salazar, the production’s sound person, “Mamma Mia” represents an opportunity to put what she has learned thus far to work. “I am a sophomore. I don’t go to Manchester High School. I am part of the Grunin Performing Arts Academy and I specialize in audio work. Manchester is my home town and since my school is a vocational school we are allowed to participate in activities at what we call our home school if we hadn’t gone to the academy.”
She was working in a booth positioned behind the auditorium seating and she works with a sound board. “It is a 16-microphone channels, possibly more, it might be 32 and basically the wireless transmission from the microphones gets sent up to the board and I get to manipulate how it sounds whether it sounds like they are in a tunnel or if they are lively and how loud or quietly you can hear them.”
“I specialize in audio engineering so I get taught how to record in a studio and how to work with live sound,” she added. I go there (the academy) full time.”
“I play Sky,” senior Gabriel Calafati said. His character of Sky Rymand, is the charming, athletic British fiancé (later husband) of Sophie Sheridan in “Mamma Mia!”
Calafati is not only busy learning his lines for the musical he’s also hard at work planning a special Relay for Life fundraising event that will take place at the high school. “It will be on June 5 (from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m.) My friend James Ruocchie is helping me with the project as well. We are working closely with the American Cancer Society and we are in charge of the various different sub-teams that we formed as part of the committee at the school. It will be held out on the football field. It is a huge fundraiser for cancer research.”
The musical will premiere at 7 p.m. on March 27 and additional performances will take place at 2 p.m. and again at 7 p.m. on March 28. The 2 p.m. performance will be a singalong showing.
Tickets can be purchased online at shorturl.at/wV3CL and cost $15 for general admission. Students and staff can attend for $8. Tickets will also be available at the door for $20.
