Enthusiasm and strong acting skills captivated the hearts of the audience during Bear River’s production of Disney’s High School.

We caught a performance on Friday, November 11. The play itself was enjoyable and fun to watch. The actors that participated in the play were amazing and crowd-pleasing. The props were well-executed, showing a lot of effort. The play was full of color and happiness from the performers, the atmosphere often real and powerful.

Teachers who helped produce the play were very pleased with the outcome of the performance.

“I think everyone learned a lot, which is one of my goals as a Director/Teacher,” said Drama Teacher Sara Noah, the play’s director. “There is so much that goes into a big production like this, and everyone needs to be a part of the team. I thought all the performers did a great job and really came through for each other to make the show go well. The audiences seemed to have fun also, which is great too.”

Students who worked behind the scenes agreed that the majority of the play was spot on and that the students only had a few things that they needed to work on. 

“We had an extremely short rehearsal period — 7 weeks as opposed to my usual 9-10 weeks for a musical production. Because of this, we didn’t have as much time to focus on vocal details, more difficult choreography, and character work because there simply wasn’t time,” said Mrs. Noah. “For example, we cut the basketball number short, which is a favorite, because of the time constraints. I am so grateful to parents and staff who made sure that everything that was essential happened for the show. I also think it will be different next year, as I was new to the school and students didn’t know me. I met a lot of wonderful performers who I hope to be working with again.”

“All in all, I thought the play went very well, there were some improvements that we could have done to make it better but, I think that it went well,” said Scout Pettitt, a freshman. “I feel that the students could have done better by just having respect for themselves, others, and towards the director. There was a lot of respect needed.”

“The first couple of performances were pretty good, but the last ones were the best and people finally brought rhythm, they weren’t scared, and they performed well towards the last performances,” said Savannah Earl, a Junior. “Overall, they did very well I thought. The students needed to be louder, they would start strong with their lines then start to die down near the end.”

“A lot of the performances went really well,” said Hannah Rothenberger, a senior. “I mean, there were a few mistakes here and there but overall it went really well. I guess the students should have been more caring about the performance and worked a bit more on their singing. Overall though, the feedback was really good, the only negative I got was some of the lead roles got a bit pitchy but the students did really well.”