November 10th,11th and 12th, Lewis-Palmer High School did a showing of Thoroughly Modern Millie, a musical about a small town girl Millie who moves to New York from Kansas to start a new life for herself.The story is set during the 1920’s.

She goes through adventures to become the richest and most modern girl there is. She had a goal of marrying her boss because he is rich, but realizes throughout the end that she should marry someone in the name of love instead of who has the most money. The production was directed by Jordan Clark, the improvisation/drama teacher at Lewis-Palmer High School.

“I saw it in on Broadway in 2003. I thought that it was a really fun show with lots of great music and great dance numbers, so I kind of had that memory from 13 years ago in place. The memory was a positive one at the time so I wanted to recreate that for others,” Clark said.

Auditions were held in mid-September before labor day. The show was costly in terms of buying costumes and rights for the show. It costed $2,500 just to put on the show, not including building the set and advertisements.

“The biggest factor going into the year is looking at who you have in terms of ability on who to cast, and So we had to find shows with lots of female leads which narrowed it down because in theatre in general there are not a lot of shows with many female parts,” Clark said. “Ultimately there are 2 male leads and 4 main female leads with a large female crew.”

There were no difficulties, as many students were involved to make things easier. Clark was proud of the results he had put so much effort into making.

“The biggest issue was that there was some racial tension in the original script with a couple characters, like the villain would do some things that would be considered racist, so because of that it would be really uneasy to play, especially for people in the audience and even the cast members I would imagine too. So to play it in a way that was clear that what the actor is doing is not something that they hold in value,” Clark said.

Max McCutcheon 12 played muzzy boy “Dexter,” a servant/entourage for Trevor Graydon, the boss of the story played by Kyle Meredith 12. McCutcheon has been doing improv since 5th grade, acting since 6th and has been in every high school play except for one, which he had to miss due to baseball. He was called back for the role of Trevor Graydon but still enjoyed his part as Dexter.

“We got the music down 2-3 weeks into it. Preparations took 2 months as practice started in September. The lines were easy to memorize, songs were easy to memorize, and the choreography was easy too but also the most difficult up until the week of performance, the tap scene called ‘Sweet Fest” since we were doing it with people with 2-3 years of experience,” McCutcheon said  “Laura Bergen came in to help with as she was the choreographer, along with the help of the dance captains Karlie Asman and Anna Lincoln. All the crews worked incredibly hard to make this production possible.”

New to the cast, Kyle Meredith played one of the lead male roles as Trevor Graydon, Millie’s boss. With only 2 months of practice, he was prepared for his role in Thoroughly Modern Millie.

“In the end it was worth it. I did enjoy the role, Mr. Clark did a good job casting people for the show, it was really fun and I felt like the role was really me so it was easy to portray. It was definitely fun working with my girlfriend. It was kind of funny since she had to kiss the other male lead, it doesn’t really bother me since it’s all staged and for acting,” Meredith said. “I was nervous but I was more excited to do it since I’m in choir so I was wondering how I could sing more in school, which is why I thought a musical would be a good idea.”

All students on the crew worked together to make this production happen. They worked hard for two months to perfect the dance routines and get the stage set up. Clark was ‘exceptionally proud’ of all the students and the final performance.