Holton High to stage "Bye Bye Birdie"

Even in a pandemic, the show must go on.

More than 50 Holton High School students are preparing for a presentation of the popular musical “Bye Bye Birdie” next weekend on the HHS stage — a production that director Tim Smale said will be the first production since the fall of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the world.

But for Smale and the students involved in the production, to be presented at 7 p.m. daily Friday through Sunday, March 26-28, it’s been an enjoyable — if somewhat different — experience.

“It’s nice to give the kids an opportunity to get onstage and perform,” Smale said. “But putting on a musical during a pandemic — it’s definitely very strange.”

Some concessions are having to be made because of the pandemic, he added, including restricting tickets to online sales and limiting seating in the HHS auditorium to 160, whereas under “normal” circumstances, as many as 575 could watch the show.

The strangest concession, Smale and students involved in the production noted, involves performers wearing masks during rehearsals — a practice that will extend to the actual performances.

“For one thing, it’s hard to project your voice from behind a mask,” Smale said. “Also, as people on stage, we act with our faces, so the fact that the bottom half of our face is cut off, that creates a really unique challenge for acting and trying to put a show together.”

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