×
×
homepage logo

THS production brings Who-ville to life

By Estuardo Garcia - | Nov 14, 2007

In the town of Tonganoxie,

in the land of sunflower,

7 p.m. was the magical hour.

“Seussical the Musical” opened with flair,

and impressed all the spectators spectating there.

This weekend, more than 60 cast and crew members got together at the Tonganoxie Performing Arts Center to perform “Seussical the Musical,” a play based on the popular children stories of Dr. Seuss.

Steve Harrell, Tonganoxie High School drama teacher and director of the show, said the production took elements of more than 10 Dr. Seuss books and combined them into the two-act play.

“It was really a task to pull it all together, and I think it went really well,” Harrell said. “There are a lot of things going on. It doesn’t have your typical feel where at the end of a scene the scenery changes for the next scene. It just rolls.”

Harrell said he chose the play because it was a great opportunity for seniors in the drama department to showcase their talents. This also gave the students a chance to play with a live orchestra, in this case the THS Band, directed by Heather Brown.

The play uses many famous Seuss characters such as the Cat in the Hat, Horton the elephant, Thing One and Thing Two and the Whos from Who-ville. It followed Horton and how he discovered the Whos floating on a speck of dust through the turmoil that took place inside Who-ville.

“I like the creativity that we were provided through Dr. Seuss’ work,” said THS senior Justin Moss, who played the 100 percent faithful Horton the elephant. “We took the initiative to create our own character through his descriptions.”

Junior Chris Jordan, who played the whimsical Cat in the Hat, felt that he really connected with that character because he is also “random and out there.”

“I liked that my character had a lot of fun,” Jordan said. “He interacted with the audience a lot. You never really knew who I was going to be or where I was going to show up.”

Besides performing the three shows, the students also performed two matinee shows, Thursday and Friday morning for the Tonganoxie Middle School, fourth and fifth graders from the Tonganoxie Elementary school and students from Genesis Christian Academy.

Click here to see a photo gallery from “Seussical the Musical.”