The school arts department decided to produce “Oliver!” as the secondary school musical for the year 2019. It was a great opportunity for both the middle school and the senior school students to show case their talents in singing, theatre, dancing and in many other ways. This production was quite special to me as it was the first ever musical that I was a part of. I am a theatre student outside of school but I never auditioned for productions in school because a lot of time and work has to be put in and it wasn’t one of my priorities to sacrifice my time. Ms. Duncan, my music teacher invited me to play percussion in the band for Oliver. I had never played percussion before and it was a challenge but I accepted the offer. The band practice for one hour every Monday afternoon and the number of rehearsals and the hours of practice increased as it got close to the day of the musical.

At first, I was handed with book with all the music which we were going to play and it had music notes. I thought that Ms Duncan had given me the wrong book because I didn’t know until that day that I didn’t know that percussion players had to read music! I was quite surprised and worried at the same time but I still decided to go along with it. It was wonderful to see how much I’ve learnt and improved my rhythmic skills. The band members were a lovely bunch, most of them were from my class and everyone supported each other as we went along.

It was quite rough as I din’t have a lot of music to play but when I did, I had a lot to play. As ingot close to the day of the final rehearsal everyone was exhausted  but the excitement is what kept everyone going. This musical was very unique as it didn’t require a stage. Instead the cast acted in the centre of the audience which made the audience be a part of the musical and the cast also got a chance to interact with the audience.  The musical went on for three days and the final night was a gala performance with dinner served to the audience and it was a very posh event.

Overall, this made me quite sad for not being a part of the cast as this was one of the best school musicals that I’ve seen but the fact that I was able to play live music and accompany the band and be apart of it made me happy and I am very grateful for that opportunity.