Over seventy students (nearly a quarter of the student body) joined the CCES theater program this February for the annual Upper School musical. This year, our talented program put on an exceptional performance of the Disney classic Beauty and the Beast. Even more impressive than the number of students in the show are those who attended: over 1500 people came to see the show over four performances, and the show sold out all three nights tickets were available to the public. 

I personally saw the show on its official opening night, Friday, and was beyond impressed. The choreography was incredible, especially considering the amount of actors and moving parts involved for numbers such as “Gaston” and “Be Our Guest.” The show even came to the audience, with chase sequences through the forest taking place in the aisles as well as multiple songs bringing characters to the sides of the theater and in the aisles. 

Notable performances include Louise Martin as Belle, Luke Brownlee as the Beast, Sarah Spratlin Bullock as Cogsworth, Alex Greene as Lumière, and Fitz Keller as Gaston. 

Brooke Grayson, who was in the crew, interviewed several members of the CCES community about the show:

What was special about this show in particular?

Lily Markalunus (Babette), Senior, : [It’s] “a show that was super well known, especially with children, so the show and the acting had to cater to children, specifically.”

Director and Theater teacher Mr. Reed Halvorson: “The technical aspects [are] so unique and specialized to this show alone. It turned into a lot of really specialized details that helped create the world.”

What was your favorite technical aspect of the show?

Lily Thomas (Mrs. Potts), Senior: “My favorite technical aspect was Maurice’s machine because it had a lot of moving parts, and it helped set the tone of magic early on in the story.”

Joseph Storti (audience member), Junior: “Phenomenal acting and singing.”

What was it like to have candles on your hands for the whole show?

Alex Greene (Lumière), Junior: “It was absurd. I had to completely change how I stand. My feet had to be together for the whole show.”

 Nathan Salamin and Computer Science teacher Mr. Chris Lipp built the flower. They 3-D printed parts of it and coded the petals to fall at specific times during the show. 

What was the trickiest part of making the flower?

Nathan: “It would probably be the code because we had a lot of issues while we were running it. Sometimes the wrong petals would fall so we had to figure out a way to make sure only the right petal would fall.”

“We had to figure out how we were going to actually release the [petals], so we decided on magnets, and so we hot-glued pieces of metal to the flower petals and then position the magnets so that the petals wouldn’t balance on the magnets when we released them.”

Mr. Lipp said about his experience: “It was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed working on it, I’d never done anything like that before. I was worried about how realistic it would look, but Mr Halvorson was right, he told me about the 30-foot rule, little tiny details don’t matter as much and so it looks more realistic farther away. At the end of the last night, a lady audibly gasped when the last petal fell. Nate hit it right at the right moment.”

This year’s production of Beauty and the Beast was an incredible blend of theatrical, voice, and technical talent from our student body. Mr. Halvorson has directed yet another over-the-top success for the CCES arts department.