After five years and 10 productions the North of Broadway Show Choir is packaging its greatest hits in a best of show entitled “And Look At Us Now”.
Heather Seear, North of Broadway’s (NOB) artistic director, said it was her young group of performers and their families who selected the content for the show which will be held May 12 and 13 at the Foothills Centennial Centre in Okotoks at 7 p.m.
“In the middle of last semester we sent an e-mail out to our kids and parents saying it’s your turn to choose and asking them what they wanted to see and hear in this show,” she said. “The response was really good.”
The many songs suggested were whittled down to a selection of melodies designed to highlight what the show choir, for children from ages five to 18, is all about.
Seear explained some of the songs were combined into medleys to allow her and NOB’s musical director, Collette Armsworthy, to pack in as many selections as possible.
“We did take some of the favourites and put them into medleys,” she said. “So we open with what we are calling ‘Rock a Round Diddy at the Hop’. It’s a combination of the songs ‘Rock Around the Clock’, ‘Doo Wah Diddy’ and ‘At the Hop.”
Seear said they’ve also combined tunes from the classic musical “The Music Man” and forged a medley of country music songs. While repackaging songs has taken some work for this greatest hits show the process of outfitting the performers has been simplified.
Seear said for NOB’s costume designer, the aforementioned Armsworthy, preparing for “And Look At Us Now” has brought her some welcome relief.
“I think it’s been her favourite semester because she hasn’t had to sew for weeks on an end,” said Seear. “For the most part she’s been able to say, ‘Okay we’re doing this number again. Here we’ll take this out of the costume bank.’”
North of Broadway is a local theatre success story. When they started in 2006 there was just a single company of 21 performers. Now there are large companies of children enrolled in four different age groups. They’ve also recently instituted a Guys and Dolls show choir exclusively for adults. It hit the stage earlier this year with the NOB original production, “They’re Gonna Do What?!!”
Now with the opening of “And Look At Us Now” on Thursday Seear said they are bringing to the stage a celebration of all the company has accomplished and of the talents of the many performers who have passed though its ranks.
“We are doing an alumni number near the end of the show,” she said. “We’re doing ‘We Go Together’ from ‘Grease’. Anyone who has ever been part of North of Broadway has been invited to be a part of this number. We hope to have some real fun revisiting the song. ‘We Go Together’ became a bit of a theme song for us early in the history of this group. I think it was because we started small and were able to start finding homes for people as performers where maybe they didn’t fit anywhere else. We also did ‘We Go Together’ in our very first show.”
Tickets for the Thursday and Friday performances of “And Look At Us Now” are just $8 each and available in advance by calling 403-470-6595 or at the door of the Foothills Centennial Centre.
