Welcome to Mount Pleasant High School and MPHS Drama’s production of Mamma Mia!
We are so excited that you chose to spend your free time with us and promise an entertaining evening of singing, dancing, and laughter – all to the music of Abba!
Mamma Mia! Is definitely an “outside of the box” musical for our Drama Department. We are known for producing shows with challenging themes that lean heavily on drama like Jeus Christ Superstar, Ragtime, and The Laramie Project. We’ve also produced comedies that venture into life lesson stories like Puffs, The Prom, and Hairspray. However, very rarely have we gone forward with a play or musical that has the sole purpose of providing an evening of pure entertainment. The closest we’ve come to that was our production of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) (revised) and Midsummer/Jersey.
This doesn’t mean we avoid selecting shows that are set up just to entertain. We always include one or two in our list of possible shows each year. We always select a show that we felt best embraces our student community and Mamma Mia! definitely fits that bill. Now, more than ever, in a world where we continue to silo ourselves and communicate through technology, we wanted to produce a show like Mamma Mia! that celebrates human connection and I am so glad that we did!
While we have had some challenges, the students and Drama staff have done their best to take the idea of “pure entertainment” and “joy” and infuse our rehearsals with those very things, making each one light-hearted, while focusing on the process. I have no doubt you will see that joy on stage tonight.
This year, we included members of one of our BSD Middle Schools, Talley, to join the cast. We wanted to give them a high school theater experience in hopes that they would pursue it once they get into high school, hopefully at Mount! The entire cast welcome each one of them with open arms and treated them as equals, which infused those students with joy!
I’d like to take a moment to thank the MPHS Administration, who have always supported the Drama Department and have seen the value of theater arts in education; the Drama Staff, who continue to collaborate to ensure the students have the best possible experience they can, while also learning a thing or two about theater; and the MPHS Drama parents and adult caregivers who continue to support their students’ creative minds, and ensure they are costumed, well fed, and the audience feels welcome.
Now it’s time to share that joy with you – the audience. We hope that you will sit back, relax, forget about life outside the walls of MPHS, and enjoy the world of Mamma Mia! In fact, we want you to be part of the experience. We’ve included the lyrics to three of Abba’s most famous songs, which we will sing at the end of our show. We want you to sing with us!
Thank you for coming and we’ll see you soon, you Dancin Queens!
Chris Turner
Drama Director
