Eureka students stage their own production
As a follow up to the success of last year’s student-led and student-directed musical “Be More Chill,” the Eureka High School drama students return this year in directing, producing, set-designing, costume-making, fundraising for, and starring in their own musical. This year’s production is “Ride the Cyclone - The Musical.” The production will be performed Friday, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 16, at 2 p.m. at the Eureka High School auditorium. Tickets are $5 for students and $8 for adults.
Coco Striefler, a junior, returns as the show’s director and cast member, and her twin sister Franka is co-director and art director and a cast member.
"Ride the Cyclone” Is a hauntingly funny musical about the ill-fated and neatly dressed teenagers of the Saint Cassian Chamber Choir, who made the fatal mistake of riding the Cyclone roller coaster together. Tragically killed, when the Cyclone malfunctions, they are sent hurtling through the air to their doom.
The six find themselves in an abandoned warehouse, greeted by a mechanical fortune teller, The Amazing Karnak. Karnak not only has the ability to predict the life and death of everyone he encounters, but because he is filled with guilt for not warning the children ahead of time, he tells the teens he will use his power to bring one — and only one — of them back to life. The catch? (There’s always a catch ...) There will be a vote among the choir members to decide who among them most deserves to live. But before the vote, the teens will each get a chance to argue their case in song.
What follows Karnak’s offer is the choir’s strange celebration of hope and life as they each perform one final concert. Through their song, they express in their own unique perspectives who they were, who they hoped they could be, and how they saw their life stuck in the same small town … all while competing against their friends for the chance to live again. When life goes off the rails, we discover what really matters.
High-school is a lot like life — hallways filled with peer pressures, insecurity, popularity contests and private hells. Even as adults, we walk among the outcasts, the mean girls, the invisible people, and the angry trouble-makers. But high school, and life, is not a game to be won — but a ride to be enjoyed through all its ups and downs.
The students are grateful to Corwin Motors Kalispell, who, for the second time, are making high school theater possible in Eureka, and to Sunburst Arts, for supporting this project again.
