Hi friends,
We open tonight with "Grease (School Version)", from Samuel French.  It is a very simple version to stage, much like "Disney's High School Musical".  We have a middle school cast of 50...41 girls and 9 boys.  I have 18 kids on my crew, including sound, lights, Super Troupers, flies and stage management.

We did it "bare stage", with only drops.  I rented the show package of 7 outstanding backdrops from Kenmark.  They are 20' x 50' and include an amazing "show scrim".  The drops are vivid and colorful.   They make up 90% of my set!  It's what I call, "A show in a box!"

About the only major prop you need, of course, is the "Greased Lightning" car.  I ended up using a 3/4 scale car based on a golf cart chassis, which turned out to be the perfect size for our 7th and 8th grade cast.  I rented the car body locally from reknowned designer and Sculpt-or-Coat inventor, John Saari at Greensboro College.

The "School Version" runs about 90 minutes, plus intermission.  They cut out lots of sexual inuendo from the lyrics. Plus all the smoking at the slumber party and the teen pregnancy, (which I think included a solo by Rizzo).  So now it's as clean as "Birdie" or "DHSM". To me, this show is a very streamlined and fast-paced "re-mix" of the original musical.   The score seems to be a little simplified for young talent.  In fact the leads are appearing on stage for the first time and doing just fine.

We only needed a 7 piece orchestra, so I just opened the center third of our pit cover.  That gave us the left and right pit areas for playing the alternating duets such as "Summer Lovin' "..  At the front of the orchestra pit opening I put a radio station position so the guy could pop up to make his announcements.

I put Countrymen earsets on the 12 leads and then two floor mics on the left and right pit areas to pick up the chorus.  For "Hand Jive" and other songs in the sock hop scene, we used an actual 4 member 7th/8th grade garage band who just won the local "Battle of the Bands". 

The T-Bird jackets and Pink Ladies jackets were borrowed from a local high school that did the show last year.  The poodle skirts and other costumes were put together by an amazing bunch of "costume mom's".  I stole four old picnic tables from around campus and repainted them for the cafeteria scene, as well as the park scene.  I used casters so the tables will move during scene changes and wagon locks so they won't move when kids dance on them.  I had my Stagecraft class painted the floor one day to match the diamond motiff on the rented drops.  And that's it!  Simple as can be!

The local TV station did a news story this morning...just click the video on the right-hand side, (sorry for the commercials that they alway tag on!) 

I recommend this show to any and all teenage theatre troupes.  Plus, as a designer, I enthusiastically recommend the stunning Kenmark backdrops to any group lucky enough to have a counterweight fly system.
-Dana