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Westlake High School Puts on Chicago The Musical: 

High School Edition

By ABBEY MARTIN

At the end of March, Westlake High School will be putting on a production of Chicago The Musical: High School Edition. The play consists of kids from all grades coming together to take part in this 1920's musical. The director is the school's Chorus Teacher, Mrs. Melito, and the choreographer is town member, Gina Horan.

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Lots of time and hard work is put into the making of this play. According to Lily Tobiasen, member of the cast, “She [Melito] held auditions during the first week of December and we officially started having rehearsal at least every other day around the second week of December.”

 

The students do not have that much time between auditions and opening night, so they have to be able to memorize lines, learn choreography and much more all before opening night within 3 months.

 

Horan is not only the choreographer of the play, but owns and teaches at her dance studio: “I began choreographing the play about 2 years ago because I thought it would be fun, the dancing in the musical together without it, it would not be as entertaining.” She works extremely hard to tailor these dances to fit not only the time period of Chicago, but also the skill level of the students.

 

Tobiasen said, “ I’ve done dance for a while before joining the play and some of the dances are still hard to learn for me; I can’t imagine some of the people who don’t have that much dance background.”

 

A lot of trial and error goes into these dances to make sure that every student can do them regardless of how much dance background they have.

 

Students begin having rehearsal every weekday around the end of February. According to Kelly Andrews, sophomore at Westlake and also member of the cast, “The rehearsals are beginning to take away a lot of my free time and time for homework, but I manage to work around it because I know with all of this hard work everyone is putting in, it will look amazing in the end.”

 

While the show is in production, spending so much free time together leads to many people becoming really close along the way. Tobiasen said, “If I had not decided to join the play freshman year, I would have not become friends with my now best friend.”

 

Many people involved in the play will say during rehearsals it's extremely stressful, but the second the show is over, they are already looking forward to next year's musical. 

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