To say Edward Milne Community School’s major musical theatre production of the year is a collaborative effort would be an understatement.
You can start with the cast of 75 students from EMCS and Journey Middle School joining forces to produce the two-hour production of Time Flies, but you’ll soon find out that’s but a small part of the undertaking. Start adding up the techies, choreographers, musical coaches, and yes, even songwriters, and you’ll soon discover this is much more a school community effort.
“All the students support the show really well,” says EMCS teacher Lisa McLellan, who is putting the show together, with the help of Journey Middle School’s Jill Fader.
Adds Fader: “It’s quite the process.”
Time Flies opens up in an airport where three elderly women have come for a reunion. The airport was an airplane factory during the Second World War. The play is interspersed with different characters who travel through the airport. Through the stories, the audience is taken back to the 1940s.
“The music is all over the place. We actually have a ’80s song in the ’40s like Pat Benatar, but also Benny Goodman in the ’40s. “It doesn’t always meet the criteria of the era, but of the story,” McLellan says.
Work on Time Flies began in September with some basic ideas and brainstorming on the theme, characters, and plot, with the production going into hyper speed last February.
“The second semester is when we bring it all together by deciding what our favourite parts are and then we work on different scenes and scenarios,” says McLellan, who then writes the show.
The cast consists mainly of EMCS junior and senior music theatre students, but they’re joined by 24 students from Journey Middle School. It’s the 13th year the two schools have collaborated on a musical production.
This year’s production is “extra special” because two EMCS students – Kiarra Balzer and Elora Fe – have written two original songs. And several show alumni have come back to help with this year’s show.
Time Flies runs from June 7 to 9 at Edward Milne Community School theatre. Showtime is 7 p.m.
