'Footloose' Swings onto MHS Stage [VIDEO]

“Footloose, the Musical,” which starts on Thursday at Montville High School, is not only acted by students, but has students in many of the major crew roles as well. It’s another big step in director Susan Walsh’s plan to put the high school performances in the hands of the high school students.

Brendan Valliere is doing the lighting, as he did on “Twelfth Night.”

Megan Rotkowitz is doing the choreography, with help from Kim Adams Neal, one of Walsh’s oldest friends.

Michael Garcia has brought some musicians from Norwich Tech, and some Montville High School students are also playing in the band.

Students are doing all the hair and makeup.

And Lacia Japp has designed the sets.

She got involved, she says, through Valliere, who suggested that she’d like it.

She was up for the challenge, she says. “I’m not a spotlight person.”

She watched “Footloose,” the movie, and went to the internet to research set designs and ideas from other productions. She found ideas she liked, and made them her own.

One of the very cool devices she’s used is a trio of what are called perris, she says. These are tall set pieces, each one a vertical triangle, with a different background on each side. To change sets, the perris rotate, the three new sides coming together to form one background.

A spinning fence is another device Japp used in the program. She had to work not only to build it and make it spin, but also to make it safe.

Parents helped build the sets, kids helped, everybody helped, Japp says.

FOR MOLLY COMFORTI, the role of Ariel – the female lead – is a challenge. Her character has three personalities: the demure and well-behaved daughter of a minister, the easy babe, and then the real Ariel, who is hidden from most people.

Comforti says she’s very close to her dad, and so she could relate easily to that part of her character. She is good friends with Corey Lorraine, who plays Ren, the male lead, so she had no trouble building the third part of her character. And to build the easy-girl part, she studied flirty girls she knows.

“It was challenging to find those three personalities,” she says.

What came more easily was the singing and dancing, which she’s been doing for years. Theater is one of her real interests, but she is going to pursue a degree in psychology at Coastal College in South Carolina next year.

COREY LORRAINE PLAYS REN, the male lead. Lorraine has always wanted to be the lead in a play, and he loves it.

“It’s a blast!” he says.

He’s nothing like Ren, though, he says, who is a little sly and a little rude – and he says that as rehearsals have become more constant and intense, Ren’s character has found its way into his real life.

“It’s so much easier to just continue the character,” rather than get in and out of the role again and again, he says.

THE ORIGINAL "FOOTLOOSE" came out in 1984, and starred Kevin Bacon as Ren McCormack, a city kid who comes to a small town where rock and roll is forbidden and dancing has been banned. Ren, who has seen the world (and read “Slaughterhouse 5”), shakes up the small town and gets folks dancing again.

A new “Footloose” movie has just come out, this one starring Kenny Wormald as Ren and Dennis Quaid as the reverend.

Doing a play that’s been a movie not once but twice has its upside (a lot of people know the music and the story) and its downside.

“People coming in are expecting something,” Lorraine says.

While there’s pressure, he’s happy with the way the show is shaping up, and the fact that kids are running the production.

“We’ve come together and we respect each other,” he says.

“This is unheard-of,” Walsh says about the kids’ work on the production.

About 50 kids all together are involved in “Footloose.” Thirty-six or 37 are in the cast, and the rest are doing the technical work.

Walsh says that “Footloose,” much like “Twelfth Night,” is about going after your dreams, even in the face of opposition.

“The productions mirror what our drama club is going through,” she says.

Click here for info on show times and ticket prices.