By Lee Thomas

If you want to know what kids these days are made of, then you should read this story and come to the show over the next two weekends. It is a story about a musical; a musical that involves facing your fears, overcoming unforeseen challenges, and proving to yourself and your friends that nothing will stop you from being who you are meant to be. You might think I’m talking about the musical itself, and you would be only partly correct. The current production of The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, at Tahoma High School, has presented the cast and crew with incredible challenges and they have risen to the occasion.

Percy Jackson is a demigod, half human, and half god. He is the son of the Greek god Poseidon only he does not know this until he is 12 years old. The musical, based on the Percy Jackson book series by Rick Riordan, takes the audience through the events of the first book. Percy discovers his true identity, makes new friends who help him on a cross country quest, fights gods and monsters who want to kill him, and learns to embrace the person he is destined to be. This all makes for an amazingly entertaining musical, but the gods themselves must have learned of this production and determined to test the cast and crew in real life before allowing this show to go on. 

In mid-November, Director Melissa Bean, Musical Director Ken Riggs, and a recent graduate, Victoria Evans working as the Director’s Assistant, cast the show scheduled to run the last weekend of January and first weekend in February 2023. The challenges began not long after the excitement of casting the show had worn off. 

Choreographer Megan Smith came down sick with whatever is going around resulting in cancelled dance rehearsals in a show that has a large cast and complicated choreography. She recovered, but this was just a warmup. Zeus himself, who controls the weather, caused extended snowstorms costing an entire week of rehearsals. Just as the snow was over, an ice storm of historic proportions hit the region costing more rehearsal time. 

The original plan was to have the show ready to start full run throughs and ready for fine tuning prior to winter break. Instead, only the first act had been run though once and a lot of work remained. All told, the cast lost nearly two weeks of rehearsal prior to the two-week winter break. This could be enough to necessitate cutting elements of the show, but the cast used their down time during the weather cancellations to run lines and practice songs together outside of school. Then during the winter break, normally an untouchable period of vacation and rest, the entire cast and some crew members spent two days rehearsing the entire show at The Buffalo gym in Maple Valley who generously donated their space to help.

With the dedication of the students, the show was ready for its first run through after the break. Behind, but still in a good place to fully prepare, massive windstorms slammed the area. The power even cut out during rehearsal but came back on after a few minutes. Luckily, the high school never fully lost power for any extended period and no more rehearsals were lost, but this was not for a lack of trying on the gods’ part. Finally, back on track, another hurdle lay in waiting.

Director Bean contracted with an internationally known flying company to install a fly and harness system to allow her to “fly” the cast during the show. Flying is a huge production element and critical for the Director’s vision of the show. Prior to installation, which was scheduled for January 15^th, the fly company, SFX Flying, shipped all the necessary equipment from their base in Kentucky. Unfortunately, only half of it arrived. Speculation was that the other half was eaten in St. Louis by the same chimera that attacked Percy and his friends. With the show opening the following week, an emergency replacement for the lost gear had to be overnighted from Kentucky. Unbelievably, this shipment was halted during shipment by a bomb sniffing dog, likely Cerberus. The shipment finally arrived Tuesday morning, January 17^th, and rushed to the school for installation during the school day by SFX and a small group of parents and crew led by Technical Director April Phillips.

This additional delay cost the show another rehearsal to accommodate the safety training that was scheduled for the day prior. Finally, all production elements in place, the cast and crew ran a full technical rehearsal Friday, January 20^th, just one week from opening. One might expect a lot of problems and stops and starts, but again, the dedication of the students, both cast and crew, saw a smooth rehearsal with sound, projections, props, costumes, and of course the flying! 

Although this production may have aged all involved by 10 years, every challenge has been met, every obstacle overcome, and the students are determined to put on the show they were meant to from the beginning. I would encourage you to support all their hard work even if you might not normally come to a high school musical. This show has it all, flying kids, gods, monsters, sword fighting, huge ensemble numbers, a live rock band, a massive stage, fun costumes, and of course the songs. Plus, it’s only $10!

Special thanks need to go to the title sponsor, Doggie Days Northwest, as well as The Buffalo gym. In addition, several local businesses have helped keep these kids fed through generous donations of food, Jersey Mikes, EJ’s Catering, and Harpold Thomas, PC (sponsoring a pizza feed). Kimbellished also donated some great temporary tattoos! Thank you to all the show sponsors and a huge thank you to all the parents who have volunteered and juggled schedules to help make this show happen. Tickets to the show can be purchased here.

This article was written by Lee Thomas and provided to the Tahoma Values website. Do you have an article you would like to publish on our site? Please contact Tahoma Values at TahomaValues@gmail.com