The Alternative Press

It’s the storm, not you, that’s bound to blow away.

These lyrics from “Hold On,” the eleven o’clock number of the musical Secret Garden, though true, offer little solace to the students and teachers producing a high school musical.

Yes, the storm will blow away, but it’s bound to be a pretty harrowing journey until then.  Students from Ridge High School are working hard, trying to put on a performance of Lucy Simon’s Secret Garden worthy of Ridge’s fine musical theater tradition.  And, although they are forced to take an unwelcome week off of work because of school vacation, director and Ridge teacher Megan Kern remains optimistic.  “It’s going to be gorgeous!” she says.  “It’s going to be gorgeous musically, it’s going to be gorgeous visually, costumes…  These kids can handle this show.”

The cast of Secret Garden auditioned just before Christmas break and started rehearsing just after.  Since then, they’ve been rehearsing four days a week after school until 5:00pm.  The student set builders, under the tutelage of fellow Ridge teacher Jason Stewart, started working on the Fall Drama set pretty much as soon as school started in September – then, as soon as they finished breaking down the Drama set, they started working on the Spring Musical.

There is a general lack of appreciation for both the amount of work and the amount of people involved in a school musical.  Secret Garden boasts a cast of about 50 students.  All told, including stage crew and orchestra, there is closer to 130 students involved with the show.  Most of these students work several hours every day to put this show together – and that schedule is about to escalate after school gets back in session.

“It totally changes,” Mrs. Kern says about the schedule for the last couple weeks of rehearsal.  “We basically meet after school and go for as long as we need to.”  But she and the other teachers are careful not to wear the students out before the grind of production week.  “I don’t believe in late nights, so we start early in the afternoon.”

The problem might be that great directors like Mrs. Kern make putting on a masterful school production look easy.  The truth is that a whole lot of time and a whole lot of people go into making a production like this a success.  But Mrs. Kern insists you will not be disappointed with the end result. 

“It’s a great story,” she says.  “It’s a classic.  We keep joking like the dancing has to be as good as the set, the singing has to be as good as the dancing… We all think really highly of each other, and the production team is really a great group of teachers.”

Secret Garden is based on the classic novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, with music and lyrics by Lucy Simon.  Ridge’s production goes up March 2-3 at 7pm.  Ridge High School is located at 268 South Finley Avenue in Basking Ridge, NJ.  For more information or to purchase tickets, visit www.ridgepac.com.