Shawnigan Lake School is celebrating the centennial year of their grand opening. With that grand celebration they wanted to do something big with their Performing Arts department, and Victoria gets to reap the rewards of it.
“As it turned out, in the school’s 100 years, The Wizard of Oz had never been done before,” says Shawnigan Lake School musical director and head of performing arts Morgan McLeod.
The school’s Performing Arts department puts on a play every year, but this is the first time they will be performing at the McPherson Theatre.
“The school has been performing in Duncan at the Cowichan Theatre for a very long time,” says McLeod. “This year we wanted to branch out and break into a Victoria audience. We want to show the calibre of production that we can do up here.”
The production cast is made up of roughly 50 students in Grades 8 through 12, with the four main leads (Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy) all in Grade 12.
“All of the leads are pretty traditional and familiar for people, but the Munchkins are very colourful and are absolutely wild. We even have some of our staff’s children filling in as mini-munchkins,” says McLeod. “They’re all very colourful and they’re very, well, ‘wild-child.’”
McLeod’s wife, Kelli, is a dance instructor at the school and one of the two choreographers of the musical. She helps handle the musical direction and the 19-piece orchestra, which is composed of local musicians. All three have an affinity for The Wizard of Oz and have assembled what they say is a cohesive team of young performers to fit the bill.
“It’s great for our students to see so many people come out and watch the show and become a part of it,” says McLeod. “To have families, and mainly little kids, come and adore our cast members and look up to them with huge, wide eyes does such a wonderful thing for their confidence.”
McLeod also teaches drama to Grade 9 students as part of the course rotation at Shawnigan Lake School. It’s part of the curriculum, along with other electives such as fly-fishing and woodworking, and gives students the opportunity to get up on stage and express themselves.
“It’s neat to see their confidence grow and see how comfortable they can get in presenting themselves in front of other people,” says McLeod. “Especially in Grade 9, when it can be such an awkward time.”
McLeod believes the skills learned in drama production and on stage are very transferable to their educational and professional careers.
“It all just continues to grow from there,” he adds. “It’s always such a big memory for the kids. Even if they don’t go on and do anything remotely associated with the arts, doing a high-school musical is always a big one on people’s memory lists.”
McLeod remembers watching The Wizard of Oz as a child and thinks back fondly on his own opportunity to perform in the musical with Stages Performing Arts School in Victoria when he was 19.
“And as it turned out, not only do we have a real, live Toto [in the Shawnigan Lake School production], but the lady that owns the dog was actually one of the trainers who trained a different Toto back when I did the [Stages] performance,” says McLeod.
The Wizard of Oz musical is based on the 1939 film, which itself was based on the 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum. The movie came out at a very experimental time in film production, when Technicolor had recently been invented. It begins entirely in black and white; as the main character, Dorothy, and her pet dog, Toto, step into a different world, everything is instantly immersed in colour.
Keeping with the colourful tradition, McLeod believes their set will create wonder and awe for their audience. Much of the set has been decorated in LED lights to really amplify the experience.
“My set designer and I have collaborated on a lot of really interesting things on stage, set- and costume-wise,” says McLeod. “We have a huge 16-foot-tall by 32-foot-wide rainbow that will be lit up on stage with LED lights. It’s going to look pretty spectacular. I’m very excited about getting a lot of fresh new faces coming to check out what we do. It’s all going to be very spectacular indeed.”
The Wizard of Oz
January 21-23
$23.50 and up, McPherson Playhouse
rmts.bc.ca
Is your school putting on a show in 2017. We so enjoyed the Wizard of Oz and the students that performed in it.