Patriot Players will be putting on “The Little Mermaid” from Mar. 31 to Apr. 3. The musical is directed by drama teacher Dr. Julian Lazarus and student director, senior Jonah Geiser. Co-Tech Directors include technology teacher Avery Travis and English teacher Chloe Felterman. The singing coordinator and vocal teacher is Keith Schwartz and the choreographer is  English teacher Catherine Boswell. 

The audience can look forward to the “crackly, poppy electricity of an opening night,” Lazarus said. Lazarus also said he hopes that when “the curtain opens and the lights go up, people go, ‘wow!’ Then once Neha opens her mouth and starts singing I want them to say ‘wow!’ I want them to say my favorite sentence in the whole world, ‘This is a high school show?’ I want to exceed their expectations and I know we can; I know we have the talent, I know we have the ability” if his unique set design comes to fruition. Lazarus encourages the community to “come to the play” because “opening night is so much fun,” Lazarus said.

The directing team is anticipating a substantial turnout for opening night. “Performing to a full, engaged audience really makes a difference versus a half full theater,” Travis said. 

Producing a full-scale musical mid-pandemic has made the path to success unclear. “First of all you got masks on, then there’s limitations to how long we can be together and how many people we can have in the audience and there’s the fear of you know what if there’s another outbreak? And then things get canceled,” Lazarus said. 

Despite these concerns, the cast is eager to see what this musical will bring to our local arts scene. “Little Mermaid is such a classic and everyone loves the movie, everyone knows it so it could be a great nostalgic moment especially for high schoolers because it’s like a movie we grew up with. I think it’s going to be really fun, especially ‘Under the sea’ because that’s like one of the biggest songs in Disney history,” lead and senior Neha Dheen said. 

The cast is ready to exceed the audience’s expectations from last fall’s production of Puffs. “Puffs was my first show in this building and we learned a lot about the building and the equipment and what our technical abilities are and where we need to put our energy. We’re spending some time at the beginning of this process to make sure that our sound is all put together correctly,” Lazarus said. 

The musical cast practices their big dance number for “Under the Sea” after school on Feb. 16. “I’m really looking forward to it, especially from the technical side how creative and beautiful this show is. Like for Puffs it was just normal people in a brick walled classroom the whole time, but this time we have a lot of different set pieces we can get more creative with the sea creature designs and the scenery designs so there’s going to be a lot of fun art going on,” Travis said.