The Garden City High School Drama Department will be holding auditions for the Advanced Musical Repertory classes (Fall 2024) and Advanced Repertory Play class (Spring 2025) on Monday, February 26 from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. and Tuesday, February 27 from 3:00 – 6:00 p.m. in the GCHS Auditorium. Callback auditions will be held on Wednesday, February 28 from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. The auditions are open to any current GCHS student, incoming freshman, or any students who are transferring to GCHS next year.
Advanced Musical Repertory is co-taught by Alice Hilt and Abigail Martinez. Advanced Repertory Play is taught by Alice Hilt. If you are unable to make the audition time, or would like a digital audition packet please contact Ms. Alice Hilt at ahilt@gckschools.com. Audition packets are available outside the black box theatre-Room A110, Room C109, Room P127, or the Choir Room at the high school. Audition packets can also be picked up from Mr. Wedel in the choir rooms at Kenneth Henderson Middle School and Horace Good Middle School.
The Advanced Musical Repertory class will be presenting the newly revised The Unsinkable Molly Brown music & lyrics by Meredith Wilson and book and additional lyrics by Dick Scanlan, based on the original book by Richard Henry Morris in the 2024 fall semester. The GCHS Drama Department will be one of 16 schools nationwide awarded a $10,000 grant to produce this show from the Educational Theatre Foundation and the Music Man Foundation. The Unsinkable Molly Brown is the rags-to-riches love story of Molly and Leadville Johnny Brown, owners of the richest mine in the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century. This new revitalized version includes the songs you love but a story that’s new and true. This is Molly as she really was: vibrant, progressive, and ready to fight for the underdog as a champion of women’s rights, labor rights, and immigration reform. This spirited tale of a legendary real-life American original follows the exploits of Molly Brown, whose feisty determination to rise above her impoverished beginnings leads her from the backwoods of Hannibal, Missouri, to the palaces of Europe. Along the way, she marries a lucky prospector, enters the highest echelons of Monte Carlo society, survives the sinking of the Titanic and, most importantly, earns the approval that she so desperately seeks from those "Beautiful People of Denver." Funny, light, uplifting and uniquely American, The Unsinkable Molly Brown charmed Broadway and Hollywood with its irresistible, outrageous title role and won over new audiences with this revitalized version when it premiered in 2020. (mtishows.com)
The Advanced Repertory Play class will present the murder mystery Murder’s in the Heir by Billy St. John in the Spring 2025 semester. Turn the game Clue into a play and you have the masterfully entertaining Murder’s in the Heir! Almost every character in this hilarious mystery has the weapon, opportunity, and motive to commit the unseen murder. And it’s up to the audience to decide who actually did it! Each of the heirs to the tyrannical billionaire Simon Starkweather has the means and the motive to do away with him. Starkweather gathers his family and employees to announce the contents of his will. His lawyer, Lois van Zandt, reveals that he has bequeathed vast fortunes to his befuddled niece Fiona, her playboy son Jordan, his great-niece Paula (a Southern belle) and his grandson Simon III, as well as to his many servants. Then Lois delivers the bombshell! Within hours this will becomes invalid. Of course, the rejected heirs are not pleased, so it’s not surprising when they roam the old mansion carrying such items as an ax, a gun, and poison. Predictably, the lights go out, and Simon is discovered murdered. Simon III (played by the same actor who plays the elderly Simon) is determined to find his grandfather’s killer, with the help of detective Mike Davis. The play’s unique ending, utilizing secret ballots gathered at intermission from the audience, determines the killer in this Billy St. John maze of murder.