After a spring musical hiatus, Grand Ledge Musicals returns with the hit show “Descendants.” With this spring musical, there are several adjustments that cast and crew have had to adapt to, one of them being choir director, Mrs. Sheri Petersen, stepping down and incoming choir director, Mr. Kenneth Bedwell, taking over.
In advance of the 2024 fall musical Petersen announced that Mean Girls would be her last musical at GLHS. In lieu of Petersen leaving students have had to adjust to different teaching styles.
“[Mr. Bedwell’s] teaching style is really different, and we’re all so used to the way that Mrs. Petersen runs rehearsals, so it’s been a shift in the way that we run things,” junior Bailea Benjamin, casted as Mal, said.
Junior AJ Parseghian, casted as Ben, agrees with Benjamin and adds, “Mrs. Petersen’s definitely missed. She’s an amazing teacher and she could teach music very well, but I think Bedwell’s done a good job of stepping into her role.”
Another major change for students in the musical this spring has been the change of time and pace. The numerous snow days and late announcement have not made it easy on any of the cast.
“This musical is definitely on a time crunch seeing as we started in January and we perform in March. Normally we have a whole summer to prepare for fall musicals,” senior dancer Sophia Long said.
With the absence of a spring musical last year, this is a first for a majority of the crew, including Parseghian and Benjamin.
“I’ve never been in other spring musicals, but I’d say the biggest difference from the other musicals is just the time. We don’t have nearly as much time in the auditorium or just in general,” Benjamin said.
Parseghian agrees by stating, “For the fall musical you have the entire summer to work on dances and memorize lines. This is a very heavy dance musical as well. The numerous snow days definitely played a role in that and we didn’t figure out we were doing this until after winter break so just not really time to do all the things.”
Although the crew has faced time crunches and director changes, there have been some upsides to the change.
“We also don’t have a pit this time, so having to base it off of rehearsal tracks is definitely adding an element on top of everything,” Parseghian said.
The cast has found the absence of the live pit to be helpful. Not only does it make for smoother rehearsals, but also a smoother show.
“Normally as we get closer to show time, Mrs. Petersen would have the wooden piano on the stage and would play our music. Then for dress rehearsals, we would bring in the whole band. Sometimes it can get kind of chaotic and it’s easy for the tempo to change by accident,” Long said.
The musical will be finalized with all its struggles and successes during the following week in preparation for the shows from March 6, 2025, through March 8, 2025. You can see both Benjamin and Parseghian in the show’s gold cast and Sophia Long in all of them in the dance crew! Tickets are for sale at https://glmusicals.ludus.com/ until the show dates or until sold out.
