After months of rehearsing BYMS advanced drama performed “Grease” the musical with two different casts with performing on the evenings of May 15th and May 16th in the BYMS Multi Purpose Room (MPR), with an entry fee of $5.

The advanced drama class had a partial performance assembly on Tuesday, May 15th, and Wednesday, May 16th.  Mrs. Leigh Ann Swarm, BYMS language arts and advanced drama teacher recently directed BYMS musical “Grease”

“At the heart of the story is the romance between hot-rodding gangster Danny Zuko and the sweet new girl in town, Sandy Dumbrowski. They had a secret romance in summer, but now back in the context of school, peer-pressure and cliques make their love a bit more complicated. Can Danny maintain his cool dude status and still get make demure Sandy his girl? The whole gang sings and dances around Danny and Sandy’s romance,” according to stageagent.com.

“Grease is a fun show because the songs are upbeat, the story-line has humor and a bit of romance as well.  There is dancing, and a lot of students know the songs too,” stated Mrs. Swarm in an interview with the Matador Messenger.

The hardest part of the play was to get the licensing for the show, Mrs.Swarm stated.  “The company is very strict and it took a long time to come through with the scripts and music.  Because of this, we were behind on our rehearsal schedule. The actors really worked hard to catch up, though, and they were ready for opening night,” added Mrs. Swarm

Swarm also stated,” Each year, when we get to our Musical Theater unit, I have the students research different musicals that fit the needs of our class.  They are asked to consider the number of roles, vocal difficulty, interest of a middle school audience, feasibility of sets and props, etc. This year, an overwhelming number of students were interested in Grease.”

Mrs. Swarm would like to say good job to the entire cast. “It would be impossible to choose just one or two actors to highlight, and it takes an entire cast to put on a great show.  I will say, though, that someone our audience may not have seen on stage much played a HUGE role in the success of our show. Musaffa Jawed, our sound and lighting technician, did a tremendous job taking care of sound and lighting cues and running the show from afar.”

The Cast list for both plays is as follows:

Danya Ali

Kendall Beu

Ian Birtler

Ryann Bonner

Melanie Borba

Payton Brocki

Kiely Delaney

Lucas Dias

Jameson Engelby

Giselle Espino

Jake Flores

Jordan Holmes

Kate Jacobson

Musaffa Jewed

Serena Keeler

Giordan Kirk

Kirra Lucas

Jillian Marquez

Ireland Mercado

Nora Naguib-Estefanous

Jake Napier

Madeline Nunez

Teixeira Rodrigues

Bailey Speakman

Matthew Travassaros  

Fionna Tucker

Lyric Wilder

Jessica Xu