ON STAGE
What: Generation Next
Where: sd62.schoolcashonline.com/fee/index
When: May 21-27, May 28-June 3, June 4-June 10
Tickets: $15
The theatre department at Royal Bay Secondary has replaced what normally would have been a large-scale, year-end musical with a mixed-media project, with hopes of raising money for future mental-health initiatives at the Colwood high school.
Theatre department head Melissa Young came up with the idea for Generation Next, a documentary-style musical that will air online starting tonight through the School District 62 website. The hour-long film, shot over several weeks in compliance with provincial health regulations, mixes interviews with students and song-and-dance numbers into a high-quality finished product that touches upon the anxiety and stress students have faced during the pandemic.
“A lot of things have impacted these teenagers, so I started the process by asking them a series of questions about their lives,” Young said. “From their answers, I chose nine musical-theatre songs that reflected some of the major themes that came out of those interviews. We expanded on that to address the state of the world today, and some of the big challenges facing teenagers today.”
Songs the students recorded include numbers from Mean Girls, Hair, Hamilton, The Prom and Dear Evan Hansen.
In previous years, the year-end production was performed before a live audience.
Young said doing a film was much easier to manage amid strict social-distancing protocols. The upside is that it gave students in the school’s Black Wing Theatre Company experience working in the film format.
“The film industry is just booming right now,” Young said. “We wanted to show them what’s it like working on a film versus working on a theatre production, what the differences are, what the process is like. It’s been a sort of different learning experience for them.”
Generation Next airs online through June 10. Young said funds raised by the film will go toward mental-health initiatives at the school next year, with input from the students who saw their curriculum — and social lives — upended by COVID-19.
“We’re going to let the students decide how the money is used. That was one of the big things that came out of the interviews, how the students’ mental health was impacted. We’re really seeing that now.”
mdevlin@timescolonist.com
