The middle and high school production of “Beauty and the Beast” was hailed by many as “the best TISA play in years.” This is due, in my opinion, to the amazing collection of acting, musical and directing talent. The cast was great; lots of impressive actors both for serious parts and especially for comedy. Tunjay and Mrs. Burns original compositions perfectly fitted the play and were executed very well by the band. We were also helped by Mr. Tangey, who managed to get great looking lighting for every scene, our backstage crew and Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Panneton, who took our unusual prop/costume requests and found all of them. Our director, Mrs. Gardener, put in huge amounts of time and effort, and really found every cast member’s strengths.

The production, for those who didn’t get to see it, was very different from the Disney animated version. Most of the extreme differences are thanks to the cast, who spent hours re-writing the script to add humor, drama, and randomness. The whole play was really a cast effort, with everyone having input into how the final product would look. In my opinion, this was the greatest strength in the whole process.

The rehearsals were really fun. They hardly felt like practicing for a play and more like we were just hanging out. From start to finish there was hardly a single person in the room who wasn’t falling over laughing. Most of this was due to the fact that there were some very funny people in our cast.

It’s easy to see that most cast members felt the same way I did; many viewers could tell that we had had fun. There was a lot of thinking on our feet, improvising and re-writing parts of the script so that a lot of us came through in our characters.

If you didn’t join this year’s play, consider joining next year’s production.

Written by Aidan Gray, M4