Wednesday, April 11, 2012

HONK! Jr. Musical
by Ashley W. and Claire M.



SUMMARY
 
In Garrison Forest Middle School, there is a musical every year.  In the 2011 - 2012 academic year, HONK! Jr. was performed.  HONK! describes  the story of the ugly duckling, called Ugly.  Ugly, his mother, Ida, his father, Drake, and his brothers and sisters go to the duck yard to meet everyone.  They find him ugly, so they shun him.  There are only two people that care about him; Ida, and the Cat, who wants to eat Ugly.  The Cat finds Ugly, and convinces Ugly to come with him to his kitchen, where the Cat can cook and eat Ugly.  Ugly escapes and goes on a number of adventures, with and without the Cat.  At the end, Ugly realizes that he is a swan and there is a happy ending.





CREATING THE PROPS, SET, AND COSTUMES 

Creating the set and props was no easy job.  The costumes were almost as hard.  For Ugly’s egg, which he emerges towards the beginning of the play, we cut a piece of plywood into an egg shape.  We then cut it in half and attached foam.  We finished it by painting it brown and splatter-painting it with white. At the start of the play, season costume crew was put to work by clearing out anything we could use in the unending costume room. They found loads of great ideas and presented them to Mrs. Herlein to be evaluated. Once they finalized the costumes for the main characters, it was time to decide for the rest of the cast. We got together and brainstormed on what different birds would be costumed as and a few days later the amazing costume crew was already at it! Everyone was fitted and ready to go by the fabulous costume designer and parent, Mrs. Conner! The ensemble had close to no time to change for each scene.  One time block was about two minutes long!  In that time block the ensemble had to take off a tunic, tie on a headband, find a huge piece of fabric, take off a swim cap, and remove their shoes!




OUR FAVORITES 

Out of all of the scenes in the production the one scene we loved performing was “Look At Him”. In this scene we, the duck yard, were ridiculing Ugly when we first saw his horrid appearance. It was our favorite scene because everyone was on stage and we had a chance to act comically mean. The scene that took the most time to choreograph was “Wild Goose Chase”, because we had so many different ideas for each dance!  This scene entails Ugly meeting Greylag and Greylag getting his goose “militia” to find Ugly’s mother.  The hardest scene to dance to was “Warts and All” because the dance started out being really complicated.  We had started out with about twenty froglet dancers and went down to about eight due to lack of space and things like that.  Mrs. Herlein found us some pretty crazy costumes to wear, consisting of green tunics, felt belts, green flowers, and green swim caps.  Our last favorite was the Blizzard scene, because of its beauty and the message was very dramatic.  We decided that the ensemble would “be” the snow.  We had six ensemble members hold ends of long sheets of fabric.  The would move them up and down with the music to create the image of snow.  Claire and I actually held the middle sheet and it was hard to stay in sync with the other fabrics!  Since there were three pieces of fabric, the front and the back would move theirs at the same time then our sheet, the middle one, would move at different times.  It was really fun, but we needed complete focus to stay on task and still look like snowflakes.





Directed by: Rachel Herlein
Music: Virginia Flynn
Stage Manager: Megan Hamilton
Set Design: Scott Herlein

Characters
Ugly - Jenny Yarmis
Ida - Sophie Polovoy
Drake - Kara Frazier
The Ducklings - Mallory Higgins, Alli Schimmel, Raquel Hyatt & Molly Cohen
Maureen - Brooke Gordon
The Cat - Maggie Baughman
Greylag - Livy Ayd
Dot - Mimi N’Diaye
Barnacles - Virginia Bonsal
Snowy - Lindsey Callaway
Pinkfoot - Abi Balkin
Blizzard Soloists - Julia Connor and Ashlei Chang
The Bullfrog - Olivia Herlein
Penny - Jaida Maller
Bewick - Elise Lyght
Grace - Princess Gray
The Turkey - Emily Oleisky
Henrietta - Vasi Argeroplos
Maggie Pie - Emma Balkin
Camera Man - Anjali Sharma
Boom Microphone - Julia Connor
The Farmer/Father Swan - Victoria Bennett
Mother Swan/Makeup Artist - Emily Martin
Bewick - Elise Lyght
The Black Swan Dancer - Jenny Wiener
Ensemble - Ashley Wells, Eryn Frazier, Elizabeth Nimetz, Ayanna Dorsey, Catherine Benjamin, Anjali Sharma, Niyi Owolabi, Davis Holmes, Brielle Herlein, Claire McMahon & Nylah Austin  
Stage Chorus - Leigh Hardy, J-Mae Ferguson, Olivia McCall, Erica Downing, Jackie Magaha, Margaret Hyde, & Lily Nisbet



Crew
Costume Crew - Head: Virginia Leach, Lizzie Bonsal, Megan Lansman, Kennedy Jenkins,
Prop Crew - Head: Sakinah Rushdan, Atallah N’Diaye, Nia Tyson, Lila Yerman, Izzy Gold
House Crew - Head: Sarah Steinberg, Sophie Berger, Madison Wilson, Jillian Quartner
Light and Sound - Dai Hayden, Ryley Young, Channing Ch, Taylor Tilson
Stage Managers - Julianna Martinez, Brooke Fruman

2 comments:

  1. The musical was so awesome! One of the best I've ever seen. Congrats to the cast and crew on an amazing performance! - Mrs. Kelland

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  2. The show was awesome. I am so proud of the cast and crew, and this was definitely a great middle school experience for me. Congrats Everyone! - Julia C.

    Note: Ananda Price was missing from the light and sound crew list. Just want to make sure she gets credit!

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