'Grease' is the word
Mar. 14—To those clamoring for more from the Sampson Community Theatre following the massive success of "Rumors," the wait will be short-lived as the next production has kicked off rehearsals. Headlining the stage this go-round is another timeless classic, "Grease."
The show is being directed by a member of the "Rumors" cast, Angela Martin, an SCT mainstay over the years, both on and off stage. While many may be quite familiar with "Grease," this production is unique in that it will be an all high school cast featuring students from all over the county.
Martin has a total of 40 students in her cast and they all come from the eight high schools in Sampson County, along with home-schooled students. Those schools include Midway, Hobbton, Lakewood, Union, Clinton, Sampson Early College, Mintz Christian Academy, Harrells Christian Academy and the home-schooled pupils.
The production is being sponsored by the Simple Gifts Fund and the show dates are set for April 28-30 and May 5-7. Show times will be Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and the Sunday matinees are at 2:30 p.m.
Seating for "Grease" will be limited so there'll be individual seat tickets purchasable before-hand on Mondays and Thursdays from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Sampson Community Theatre.
The cast held the first of their rehearsals this past Thursday and last weekend on Saturday and Sunday. Martin shared her thoughts on the production after Sunday's rehearsals.
"I'm the theater arts teacher at Hobbton and I've done theater productions here for over 18 years," she said. "I've done over 80 production so far throughout my career as a theater person. So I just had an idea of doing the all-county musical."
"I've done all-county musicals before, but I've never had it funded by Simple Gifts, the scholarship fund, and I thought, what a great way for them to raise awareness of their program," she said. "I thought, what a great place to have it because this is basically a centralized location."
After that idea came to mind, Martin began scouring the county trying to find as many of cast members she could from every high school.
"So I went to all of the high schools in our county and also encouraged home-school students as well to participate," she said. "It's going to be exciting and it's very exciting to have the energy and the youth from all over our county taking part of it."
"A lot of people know Grease, of course, and a lot of adults know Grease, it's very familiar, plus you can watch it on TV and all that," Martin continued. "The exciting thing about this show is, not only is every person involved a student, that are from ninth to 12th grade, but they bring that energy of youth into it too. But also, a lot of people familiar with Grease know it for its sometimes questionable lyrics or things that when they were young they didn't notice, but when they're adults are like no, wait a minute, this wasn't exactly right."
"So this version is actually one called a school version, so it's actually kid friendly," she added. "So you can bring any child from kindergarten all the way up to see it. It's a fantastic story that's still the show you remember, but it takes out any terms that are considered, well, not kid-friendly."
To those now interested in seeing what this production of "Grease" has in store, Martin left them these words.
"I hope that everybody can come to see the show because it's just gonna have a lot of energy and I think those students are going to be fantastic."
Reach Michael B. Hardison at 910-249-4231. Follow us on Twitter at @SamsponInd, like us on Facebook, and check out our Instagram at @thesampsonindependent.
