A fresh taste of Disney magic will soon be coming to Yellowknife.
A group of students from the St. Patrick High School have been working out of the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre to put together a musical production of the Disney property, Descendants.
Director Emma Smith shared what she finds particularly interesting about working on Descendants in regards to the incredibly long and varied history that many Disney characters have.
“What I love about the Descendants is that it plays heavily to the nostalgia that people like me grew up with, with Beauty and the Beast, for example, but it takes that nostalgia and turns it up on its head because it’s a new generation. Beauty and the Beast is a really old show! We think it isn’t, but it’s been around for a long time, and so it’s a refresh, it’s a revamp, it’s a revitalization, and my students have grown up watching the Descendants films, and so it’s a big deal for them to get to live and breath it, and become those characters.”
Despite being briefly interrupted by an unexpected fire drill, the interview continued, and Smith shared some more about her experience as a director.
“The performance days are great. It’s everything leading up when I’m working. My philosophy is that I want students to run it. They call theatre the ‘Benevolent Dictatorship,’ so I’m definitely a dictator, but then when there’s a show and an audience, I sit in the audience. I trust my students to run it. I really do, and if you look at how we handled an unexpected fire drill, at a different school just now, we were smooth, we were like butter, we marched in line, my stage manager had our attendance list. We were ready to go for any occasion, and I think that kinda proves what kind of cohesion we’ve managed to create this year.”
Two of the lead members of the cast, Hanna Janes and Victoria Sloan, also shared some of their thoughts. They explained that they were excited to finally be working without the script and to finally be in costume, but that also brings with it a higher level of stress, and the worry that something important, be it a line of dialouge or a specific prop, will be forgotten. Regardless, both the students and Director Smith expressed the highest confidence in their upcoming performance.
The show will be running at the NACC on December 15th, 16th, and 17th at 7:00pm, with a Saturday Matinee at 2:00. Tickets will be available at nacc.nt.ca, or at the NACC Box Office.
