If you had to, could you make a case for your life?
That’s what six high school students stuck in limbo after dying in a roller coaster accident are faced with in “Ride the Cyclone: Teen Edition.” The six are members of a Canadian choir who are offered the chance for one of them to return to life by Karnac, a mechanical fortune teller. The catch? The students must decide among themselves who gets to live.
Durango High School Troupe 1096’s production of “Cyclone” will open April 30 and is staged by the troupe’s upperclassmen. It’s also divided into two casts of eight actors – Cast Roller and Cast Coaster – that will each take separate performances during the show’s run.
Junior Clio Bendell, publicity manager for the troupe, said showcasing the group’s upperclassmen in the production is an important way to honor the work they have put in during their years as student actors at DHS.
“It’s really meaningful to the seniors, because it’s their last musical with us before they graduate,” said Bendell, who has been with the troupe for three years. “So it’s all super fun for them to just get to sing and dance together.”
She said the ensemble has put together a strong production, especially given the fairly quick turnaround after 1096’s most recent show, “The Laramie Project.”
“It’s very difficult to describe the vibe of the show honestly, without seeing it, but I think especially with some of the types of songs, it’s run goosebumps on your arms every single time,” Bendell said. “I think that the actors alone are amazing.”
Two seniors – Gillian Reynolds (Cast Roller) and troupe co-President Valentine Kuntz (Cast Coaster) – are both playing the character Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg. They said playing the same character in the different casts has helped their acting because they have been able to play off each other during rehearsals.
“The dynamic of having a second cast is really fun, because then it means I get to work closely with the other person who plays Ocean, and that’s been really fun,” Kuntz said. “I’m really enjoying the group of people in this show, because it’s a very small show for each cast.”
“It’s so fun to have a counterpart,” said Reynolds, who also serves as choreographer for the show. “And Valentine is the best one to have. It is so much fun. I actually got to sit down with it in my own time and look at all the individual songs and choreograph them and then teach them to all my castmates. I feel like I’m just really embedded in this show right now. It’s a very wild show, there’s just so much going on.”
Having just come off the production of “The Laramie Project,” which was about Laramie, Wyoming’s response to the murder of Matthew Shepard, a show dealing with a heavy topic, “Cyclone,” while its story is heavy, is more thought-provoking, the students said.
“I think our ‘Laramie Project’ was a lot tougher when it comes to tough topics,” Kuntz said. “I think the show does a good job of keeping the topic light. Obviously, it’s six choir students who die, but I think it ends in a very sweet way.”
What makes the show challenging, Reynolds said, is that the actors are playing students who are their age going through this impossible predicament.
“It is heavier than I think it may seem, it’s really difficult,” she said. “Putting ourselves in these positions knowing that we’re actually the same age as these characters and we’re at the same point in our lives that they were actually … it’s a weird feeling.”
And for Reynolds, there are some pretty big lessons that can be taken away from “Ride the Cyclone.”
“I think that the audience should take away how valuable friendship is and how valuable connections are,” she said. “You don’t know how special a moment is until it’s a memory. You don’t know how special time is until it’s already gone. Life is very valuable. Also, you might have more in common with someone you think you don’t know very well. You might have more in common than you think. So kindness is key.”
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