The South High School theater department is hosting their new musical, “Footloose.” However, this time the theater department will be offering an Audition workshop. The point of this workshop is to assist students who are first time auditioners, helping to introduce them to the musical theater world and ease their nerves about auditioning. In order to attend these workshop sessions, students must sign up with Crystal Spring, South’s theater teacher and coordinator, or Brianna Salhus, South’s choreographer to attend a session. Due to limited space, interested students may only sign up for one of the two sessions. These audition workshop sessions will take place on Thursday, November 30th. There will be two workshop sessions: one during 5th hour and one during 6th hour.
Students can expect to meet the musical theater team and get to learn eight counts of a dance, a chorus of a song, and part of a song. Students will not need to do anything by themselves. Spring said students won’t have to sing in front of anybody by themselves or dance in front of anybody by themselves. “If that’s like holding people back, they will not have to do that. And we’re not gonna force anybody to do that.” Spring wants this to be a comfortable and fun experience for the students.
The new musical “Footloose” that the South Theater department will be performing is about a teenage boy named Ren from Chicago who moves to a small country town and likes to dance, however, the town has banned dancing. Ren also falls in love with the preacher’s daughter, Lori Singer.
The reason as to why Spring chose Footloose for this year’s performance was because she believes that it has some relevance to our current time and events happening around the world. She said, “I think right now, in our country’s history at this moment in time, there’s so much that people are trying to ban.” Two examples Spring named were drag and abortion. She also mentioned that “there are many things that they’re trying to reverse in history.” Spring said since this play is from the eighties, she felt that it was a good example of us still having these conversations over things being banned.
Spring’s goal with this workshop is to bring forward students who might be nervous about auditioning or have never auditioned or been a part of musical theater before. Because theater was majorly impacted by Covid and online school, many students didn’t get to build some of those theater skills and Spring wants to make up for the lost time. They really want to give new theater participants a chance, especially those who are nervous, on the fence, or have never been a part of a theater production before. Additionally, Spring wanted to have a time during school to meet the musical theater team, consisting of choreographer Brianna Salhus, music director Chris, and stage director Scotty. Salhus works at South, while Chris and Scotty are artists in the community coming in to work with South theater students.
From this audition workshop, Spring is looking for a joyful experience for people who are willing to build community and be in community together. “It’s really important to us. We’re looking for people who are willing to try and just put their best foot forward,” emphasized Spring. “We’re not expecting anybody to come in knowing how to already sing, knowing how to already dance. School is a place of learning, right? This is a place to learn how to do those things.” They want to represent the South school community and the many different kinds of students we have at this school. She mentioned how not everybody has the opportunity to do theater and not everybody had the theater experience. This isn’t just for students who have had a lot of experience, they want students to come in who are willing to try something new. They are looking for the spirit of collaboration, that spirit of being in community and the will to just try and learn something new. Spring still wants people to have fun and connect to each other because she feels like a big piece of what has been missing these past few years is that sense of connection, that sense of joy and that sense of community.
Spring hopes to see students come in during 5th or 6th hour on Thursday, November 30th to try to build a community with them and the theater department.
