Greasing it up!

The Lake City high school performing arts department sang, danced, and acted their hearts out to the classic play Grease. This 50s rock ‘n’ roll musical was performed on the first two weekends of November 2015. Sandra Seaton, the Lake City high school drama teacher directed the student actors, builders, makeup artists, costume makers, and backstage workers for months to get the Grease production perfect.

The movie Grease portrays all the emotions of a high school love story. Peer pressure, heartbreak, and happiness are all shown through singing, dancing, and acting. The Lake City High School actors re-enact this play perfectly. Oskar Owens, who played Danny Zuko cut six inches off his hair for the production. When Oscar was asked how much more effort he had to put into this musical compared to most plays he replied, “In Grease we had to learn and memorize how to dance, sing, and act. So we had to put in three times more effort.”

Grease broke down into 13 scenes split by an intermission after scene seven. Each scene is set in a different location such as the cafeteria, the park, the school gym, Jan’s (Grace Warnick) family room, the drive-in movie, the street corner, and the burger palace.   

When was asked how much time was put into Grease production, Sandra Seaton explained “It took us eight weeks to prepare Grease. We worked three hours after school every weekday and four hours every Saturday.” This means they put in more than 150 hours to prepare for six, two and a half-hour productions. Sandra believes that Grease is set apart from every other play, “Grease represents a high school experience to everyone. Everyone can take a perspective of the play and view it as their own.”

       Behind the scenes of the production, many busy bodies worked to set up the complex scenes of Grease. Emma Bolkavats explained what was it like building the set of Grease by saying, “I thought building the set was a little stressful, but at the same time I had a lot of fun building it. It took us about two months, so it was pretty time consuming. However, because of all of the hardworking people building the set, we got it done and it looks amazing!”

       A live orchestra, including a piano, guitar, bass, two tenor saxophones, and drums played on the top of the structure built for the play. The makeup artists, hair crew, costume artists are a very important part of this production. The Grease filled hair, beautiful dance dresses, Rizzo’s (Anika Hill) dark makeup, and Frenchy’s (Mariah Alexander) purple hair told a visual story of its own.

Overall the production of Grease was a hit! Some nights were sold out to the point that Lake City had to send people away at the door! Grease could not have been made without every person putting in the hours and working their hardest.