Every year Highlands High School is the host to two musicals that both the cast and crew work very hard on. This year’s winter play was Puffs, and this upcoming spring play will be The SpongeBob Musical showing from Thursday March 20 until Sunday March 23.
The SpongeBob Musical is a family friendly play that allows for the audience to experience a never before seen adventure of SpongeBob finding a way to save Bikini Bottom. This musical is different from the ones that Highlands Theatre Productions has put on the last few years.
“The SpongeBob Musical was chosen as the spring musical because there was a desire from the community to see some more family friendly shows,” show director Claire LaNicca said. “If you know anything about Highlands Theater history they’ve been doing some really amazing classics so there wasn’t really a good family friendly show in there.”
This version of SpongeBob will have certain aspects different and original from the broadway version.
“For the most part as far as the script and storyline it’s pretty close to the broadway version…now we have our own interpretation of our own costumes, our own staging, and our own choreography,” LaNicca said.
Many students had auditioned for The SpongeBob Musical. In the end Emil Sztanyo (9) was chosen for the role of SpongeBob SquarePants. Sztanyo has been working very hard to perfect this role and has put a lot of time into this role.
“To get ready for each rehearsal we start by doing pre-show warm ups and this helps a lot to get ready for the physical demands that the show needs,” Sztanyo said.
Set crew begins by running through the show with the director of the musical and learning what they must include in the set. Afterwards they then start designing the layout of the set for the upcoming musical with this year with the musical being SpongeBob, they must include an underwater theme which causes for the set to be more technical to design this year.
“This year we’re giving the set an underwater theme by having two false prosceniums. That is the stage frames with flats and then we paint them both blue,” Assistant paint/set designer, Shreya Vagehela (12), said.
The props crew has spent nearly every day after school since production for SpongeBob began either working through the script to find the props that they need to make, or going through the creation process of making the props.
“We’re currently working on making the jellyfish for the ‘My Middle Name is Hero’ song,” props head Lucy Runyan (9) said. “It’s going pretty well. It’s just a matter of getting them to look right and be able to move for the dancing parts of the song.”
The cast and crew are excited for this musical to take the stage as everyone has been working to make this musical a fun and interesting experience for the audience.
“People should come and see SpongeBob because it is so good and just such a feel good show,” LaNicca said. “It’s very family friendly, it’s got so much good visuals. The costumes are great, the lighting and sets are going to be great. It’s not like your traditional broadway production and it is its own unique story to the SpongeBob franchise.”
