This year the drama department’s spring musical will be “Freaky Friday” by Tom Kitt, Brian Yorky and Bridget Carpenter, first produced in 2016. 

The musical, based on the 1972 book by Mary Rodgers and the 1976 and 2003 film adaptations, follows the dysfunctional Blake family as the mother Katherine and her daughter Ellie magically switch bodies and must maneuver the complexities of each other’s day-to-day lives.  

Director Sarah Thermond said that she and music director Andrew Ford chose a more contemporary storyline with pop-inspired songs after receiving student input.

“Last year I got a lot of input for wanting it to be obviously female-heavy because more so than in other years we have more ladies than gentlemen,” Thermond said. “And, after doing two shows that were based on films from the 1960s with very old, famous songs that everybody knows, there seemed to be a desire to do a show more rooted in contemporary and pop music.” The past two spring musicals have been “The Sound of Music” in 2019 and “Mary Poppins” in 2018.

Along with having contemporary music, the production will feature more modern styles of dance such as jazz and hip hop, choreographed by 2012 alumna Valerie Peterson. 

Thermond notes that the show is “tastefully” PG-13, as it deals with issues such as recreational drug use and the death of a parent. With the story centered around the lives of high schoolers, she said that student actors are enthusiastic to do a show where they can more easily relate to the characters. 

However, Thermond is always wary of productions that write exaggerated versions of modern teenagers.

“I usually avoid casting actual high school students as high school students because representations of them in musicals can be very corny and overly stereotyped,” she said. “But this one has a lot of truth in it, so that made me very excited to go over it with the students.”

After auditions in mid-January, seniors Marly Feigin and Natalie Tjahjadi were picked to play Katherine Blake and daughter Ellie, the female leads that switch bodies within the story. Senior Abhay Manchala will play Katherine’s fiancé Mike, and seventh-grader Nolan Thompson will play Ellie’s younger brother, Fletcher.

Tjahjadi foresees the challenges of playing two characters with unique personalities and demeanors.

“Playing Ellie is going to be different than previous roles I’ve had in the past because for most of the show I am technically acting as Katherine, the mother,” she said. “So I will have to embody two different characters in the same show.”

Tjahjadi also said that “Freaky Friday” will be vocally demanding for the whole cast. Thermond attributes its potential difficulty to the shift from more traditional to modern belting and singing.

“There’s not a coloratura or a soprano note to be found in this play and our last two years’ callbacks were listening to high notes,” Thermond said. “This year that’s not what’s happening. So that style is different.”

Yet, Thermond often finds that students are actually more comfortable with a modern style, because “it imitates what students are inundated with in real life.”

“Freaky Friday” will open in the McAfee Center on April 24 and close May 2.