When the bell rings after third period and students move through the halls searching for an open advisory room, dozens of music students head down to the choir room to run songs and dances. The Central Kitsap High School choir typically uses their mid-year concert as a musical review, but this year, their concert will be a full musical. Vocal Music Director Alicia Rodenko worked with students to decide on the show change.
“I have quite a few students who love the show ‘Hadestown,’ and they asked if during our regular musical theater review section, we could actually put on the production of ‘Hadestown,’” Rodenko said. “It is a sung-through folk opera, which means that there isn’t dialogue breaking [it] up. There are 36 songs, and that is the entirety of the show.”
The musical review features songs from all sorts of genres and shows, and has been a CKHS choir staple for years. But, as students grew tired of the same type of concert, they began to experiment with ideas for the next year.
“We were looking for something different to do for this musical theater concert, and the rights to ‘Hadestown’ had just come out, and we were very excited about that,” student choreographer Jennaveve Hernandez said. “We just decided we have the talent, and we have the people who would be willing to do this. So we took a leap of faith, and we decided to do an abstract show such as ‘Hadestown.’”
The story is inspired by the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, mixed with an old-fashioned jazzy music type.
“The story is about Orpheus and Eurydice and how they fall in love, and then they find out that Orpheus is telling the exact same story of how Hades and Persephone fell in love,” student Micah Boike said.
The show has a small cast of speaking characters, and with three choirs combined, Rodenko had to be creative in how she cast the show.
“When we finished with our winter concert in December, we had a couple of weeks before winter break started,” Rodenko said. “We put it out there; anybody who wanted to audition for these named roles in the show could bring one of these assigned songs, and we had a lot of people singing, and we ended up casting the show. It’s been a new experience for us, evolving and changing, going with the flow as we run into things, and discover new ways about it.”The students are not just acting and singing, but also helping with production. Hernandez plays one of the Eurydices, but also helps plan, choreograph, direct, and work with other students.
“I absolutely love getting to exercise my creativity, and it’s really awesome to see these ideas that I have on paper or online — come alive on stage,” Hernandez said.
There are many challenges to putting on a musical of this size. Firstly, the show itself is emotionally and technically difficult. It takes both a good actor and a good singer to pull off a character of this depth.
“It’s been a lot of fun to challenge myself with something that necessarily isn’t my favorite,” Hernandez said. “I think it’s incredible, don’t get me wrong, but to put myself in a position where this music is hard for me to understand, this plot is hard for me to understand, these characters are hard for me to understand. It’s really challenging myself as an actress and as a dancer and as a performer to step into something that I don’t necessarily love.”
Another challenge was “Hadestown” rehearsals overlapping with rehearsals for “The Addams Family.” Many actors in one also acted in the other, making it difficult to find time to practice the music and choreography for both.
“One of the lessons that we learned from doing ‘[The] Addams Family’ and ‘Hadestown’ preparations at the same time is that we’re not going to do two musicals at the same time,” Rodenko said. “So this might be something that we do just every few years. Because it’s more expensive, and it does take quite a bit more effort, but next year we’re going back to the review, but I think with some lessons learned to make that an even better experience.”
The audience reaction was a third challenge for CKHS choir, as the musical is quite different from their usual review.
“I am nervous about what our audience [thinks], who is used to a big, flashy musical review with all of your favorite songs, how they are going to respond to some of those things, because this does take a little bit more commitment to the story,” Rodenko said. “It’s not necessarily an easy story to follow, and it’s deep.”
But, despite the challenges, doing a musical is worth it to the choir students. They get to spend time working on their passions with their friends and mentors.
“We have built a very strong community,” Boike said. “We’re all very good friends, we’re all very close, and we’re all very supportive of each other. Big characters, people who are doing solos, I hope they feel very appreciated and know that they’re doing good. Because not everybody is going into this super confident, but we’re trying to instill confidence into people.”
The show opens March 28, and has a four-show run until closing night on March 30. Audiences can expect to see a high-energy show with lots of actors.
“They can expect to see different layers; 85 people on stage is a lot of people on stage. So it creates a really powerful visual,” Rodenko said.
The choir students are working incredibly hard to prepare the show before they open. They spend their class periods, advisories, and time after school and at home to make sure that the show goes as good as it can for their audiences.
“I’m wildly impressed and ridiculously proud of them,” Rodenko said. “I just hope people come to see it, and to give them the support they need because they have been working their behinds off for a long time.”
