Grace Norton Roger Students Prep for Variety Show

Mondays and Wednesday evenings have been busy nights this month at  as students home their various talents for the upcoming GNR Variety Show.

The 14th annual show, which will feature kindergarten through fifth-grade students in acts that they devised themselves, will be on Friday, May 20, from 7 to 9 p.m. Tickets, which are available for $5 from GNR’s PTO, are $5. Admission for children 4 and under is free.

The school has been running rehearsals Mondays and Wednesday evenings for the show in the school’s auditorium, and students can elect to practice the night of their choice.

This year there will be about 57 students in the show in 30 acts. Among the performances this year will be dancing, singing, jokes, magic tricks, instrumental performances and martial arts, notes Angela Henderson, one of the show’s organizers. There will be a finale performance by all the variety show students of the song “Somebody” by Lemonade Mouth.

Fifth-grader Ian Pratt will be one of the performers this year. He will be playing “The Little Brown Jug” and another musical number with fellow musicians Jevon Shropshire-Sands, Mike Newton and Jordon Shropshire-Sands.

“I’ve always been interested in jazz, so that’s why I wanted to play the saxophone,” Ian said.

Second-grade student Mackenzie Hoeflinger will perform a jazz dance to the song, “Someday My Prince Will Come,” with friends Julia Kim and Emily Kim*, who are also in the second grade. Mackenzie said she decided to be a part of the variety show “because I like going on stage."

While the students will no doubt carry the show, the work of school parents is crucial to the show’s success. School parents will be working behind the scenes, and the show’s organizers could always use more volunteers. Parents will be donating drinks and snacks to and will be working at the concession stand, working backstage with the performers, making the banners and the programs for the show, and will be cleaning up after the show’s conclusion.

* Julia Kim and Emily Kim are the daughters of columnist Lauren Kim.