It was a special experience for a few Medicine Hat high school students.
Crescent Heights art students had the opportunity to go to Anaheim to learn the art of stage performance from industry experts.
Every student who went will be cast in the Crescent Heights High School production of “Mean Girls”.
Spending four days in Anaheim and one day in Hollywood, students received master classes at Studio City and Disney’s Performing Arts Excellence Workshop.
One of the instructors was Terron Brooks, known as the voice of Simba for the “Lion King” stage play. Crescent Heights student Bailey Streifel, one of the 20 students who went on the trip said that some of the instruction he provided helped her tap into her talent.
“It was the one workshop with the singing with Encanto. He [Brooks] made us all think like we could be louder, so much louder than we thought we could and he was like ‘just imagine there’s like 40 people in the room’ and there was 20 of us and we made the whole room echo,” Streifel said.
“What you can do with your brain and think like “I can do this” and he made it happen just like that and it was just an amazing learning experience,” she said.
Drama teacher Jennifer Davies said that theater clubs need to audition and only 25 per cent of applicants get in.
Medicine Hat has seen representation for three consecutive years. Before too long, we could see familiar faces on the big stage.
“When we finished one of our vocal workshops, one of the best compliments we got was from this director who said that “you have a lot of students who should be pursuing this professionally, I feel like a lot of these students can work pretty shortly into the industry’,” Davies said.
“To have that kind of a compliment for a group of mainly grade 10 students was pretty impressive. We were very flattered to have that kind of a comparison and that kind of encouragement,” she said.
Among the teachers was choreographer and director Kevin Gregg, who worked on the “Tangled” theater production and Cynthia McGarity, who was the music director for the “Legally Blonde” and “Shrek the Musical” Broadway productions.
