The Lion King roared into Lac La Biche last week as locala high school drama students performed for audiences across the community. The drama students of JA Williams High School in Lac La Biche performed their production of The Lion King Jr.
The Lion King roared into Lac La Biche last week as locala high school drama students performed for audiences across the community.
The drama students of JA Williams High School in Lac La Biche performed their production of The Lion King Jr. through the week for students in local elementary and middle schools, leading up to their nightly performances from Dec. 6-9 at Portage College in the McGrane Theatre.
The production of the popular story about a young lion cub who grows up to be a leader of his pride was an interactive performance, with the cast leaving the stage at times to run through the aisles of the theatre and encouraging the audience to sing along to the Lion King’ s most popular songs.
Aimee Berland, the school’ s Drama teacher and the Director of the JAWS version of the Lion King Jr. production, has been putting on productions for over 10 years. She was pleased with this year’ s ensemble of actors and stage crews. She said the students have worked hard throughout the semester and she is happy with how everything turned out.
“They’ ve done really well,” she said. “They should be really proud.”
The idea to put together a Lion King production was decided last year. Students are able to give their ideas of what they would like to see done and then staff members are able to see what they can get the production rights for.
For this production, they had the costumes ordered a year in advance, but due to some complications just weeks before the show was to hit the stage, the company they were working with couldn’ t provide the costumes. The school group had to scramble to find another place to get costumes. They ended up getting most of the headpieces from a company in Texas. The costumes arrived about a week before their first performance. The cast only had three days to practice with the costumes, but Berland said, “they did great.”
Around 60 students have been working on the production since the beginning of October, including getting involved with the sets and costumes.
Although it is a production put on by the Grade 12 drama class, there are many other JAWS classes such as Art and Media Design that are also involved.
“It really is a team effort,” said Berland.
The show played to near-sold-out performances each night.
Couldn't get a ticket? Here's the show on the high school's video channel click here
