Greased Lightnin’ takes Soldotna stage

The greasers and the pink ladies will take to the Soldotna High School stage next weekend as the school’s drama department puts on “Grease: The School Version” on Dec. 5, 6 and 7.

“Grease” is a classic, director Sara Erfurth said Monday. It has a fun, period setting in and around a 1950s high school. It features iconic songs and flashy dances. It’s a “bucket list” item, a show that Erfurth said she’s long been interested in staging.

The show centers the two cliques, the greasers and the pink ladies, as they collide and entangle — driven by fraught romance of Danny and Sandy.

A challenge often cited by local theater groups — from high school drama departments all the way to the Kenai Performers — is drawing enough male performers to fill out certain casts. Erfurth said she knew now was the time to produce “Grease” because she had a cast of boys to bring the greasers to life.

In Scott Powell, the show finds its Danny Zuko. The show demands of him — like all its cast — singing, dancing and acting at the same time. It’s the dance routines that he said are the most fun.

The show, Powell said, is intense, fun and energetic. He’s a former competitive dancer, and he said that in set pieces like “Born to Hand Jive,” there’s a lot of space to “go all out.”

Hannah Burton plays Sandy, who once thought she would be attending a private Christian school but instead finds herself mired in the drama of public high school. Burton said her character is new to the school, making friends with the pink ladies and reconnecting with one-time summer fling Danny.

Burton said she had some critical thoughts about the perhaps-dated depiction of Sandy, especially as she changes herself to benefit Danny, but, she said, “Grease” is a fun, energetic show brought to life by the talent of the Soldotna actors.

Mya Fielden and Lily Hannevold are members of the show’s ensemble.

Fielden said that “Grease” is special because it’s a show that everyone has at least passing familiarity with. It’s also, as a senior, her final musical.

“Gotta go out with a bang,” she said.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hannevold said she’s never been in a musical before, but that the energy of the full cast performing on stage has made it easy to get swept into the fun.

To put on a show like “Grease,” Erfurth said, takes a lot of time and investment from “all the parties involved.” When audiences sink into their seats next week, they’ll certainly see a showcase of local acting talent — singing and dancing through recognizable tunes — but also props, sets and costumes designed by the show’s crew and a band playing the music live on stage — themselves a part of the show.

Erfurth is joined at the helm of the ship by an assistant director, JLee Webster, as well as vocal director Audra Calloway and band director Mark Jurek.

Being onstage during a musical, Jurek said, is unusual experience for a band — usually residing within the orchestra pit. Filling out their own corner of the stage, his performers will get to see the actors dancing and singing — which they can cue into and communicate with in their own way. He said the band will feature a couple guitars, drums, piano and saxophone — and the simple rock hooks will leave them some space to add some improvisation.

Calloway said that some of the challenge for the actors comes in putting all the pieces together. It’s one thing to sing, even to sing while dancing — but they have to embody their characters while doing both.

“You can’t just be up there moving, you’ve got to look like you mean it,” she said.

Callie Babitt helms the set crew, which she said means she leads creation of the sets and ensures they all look nice. For “Grease,” that means creating the bedrooms for some of the characters and also the diner. There’s also props to facilitate other scenes — like a set of lockers or a dance floor.

The process to create the environments that will be seen onstage next weekend takes just as long as the rehearsal process undertaken by the actors. She said that means consulting extensively with her director, and also seeking out other sources of inspiration. On Monday, Babitt was still overseeing refinements to certain elements — a personal favorite is the bedroom set, where carefully cut cardboard emulates the exterior siding of a house.

“Grease” is relevant and applicable to student’s lives, Erfurth said, because despite its 1950s setting, it relies on timeless high school tropes. There’s drama, pettiness, gossip, relationship problems. It’s a show that hasn’t been put on locally for several years, being realized by “this new generation.”

“These are all very topically relevant to what students are actually going through,” Erfurth said.

It’s fun, she said, to watch “straight-laced” students come alive onstage as the rambunctious greasers, or see the pink ladies play out their dynamics both with and against one another.

Powell said Zuko, and the greasers more broadly, are an exaggerated and silly stereotype of the high school boy. They’re “girl-crazy,” they’re obsessed with cars, and they think at the surface level. He said there’s a certain language barrier to some of the 1950s lingo, and he wasn’t sure whether high schoolers would really race home to catch “Mickey Mouse Club.”

He said that, unlike in a Shakespeare play, for example, each of the actors in “Grease” has something in their lives to connect with. They’ve had to navigate social dynamics, been new to a classroom, tried to communicate their feelings.

“It’s all stuff that we can relate to, all stuff that we can experience in our daily lives,” he said. “We’re able to bring that out on this stage — able to portray this story authentically.”

Burton said she was reflecting more on the way things are different. Without cellphones, the characters spend more time hanging out at the diner and focused on their social organizations.

“Grease” will run in the Soldotna High School Auditorium next weekend, Dec. 5, 6 and 7 with all shows at 6 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the door, general admission is $15, students are $10.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.