Grease

Book, Music and Lyrics by
Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey

Performed
June 23-26, 29-30, July 1-3, and 6-10, 2004
at
The Boal Barn Playhouse

Production Staff

Director	Jason Zanitsch
Musical Director	Brian Victor
Choreographer	Caitlin Osborne
Scenic Designer	Anne Thompson
Costume Designer	Deborah Osborne
Technical Director	Alexa Krepps
Lighting Designer	Jason Zanitsch
Stage Manager	Erin Albrecht
Apprentice Coordinator	William C. Mulberger

About the Show

Rydell High is arguably the best-known high school in America. It is located in the center of Jim Jacob’s and Warren Casey’s vastly popular musical, Grease. Although produced in the 1970’s, Grease is a nostalgic look back to the Eisenhower Era – no Vietnam, no political assassinations, no hard rock. It’s a time when teenage boys wore ducktail hairdos and T-shirts with cigarette packs in rolled-up sleeves and teenage girls wore beehive hairdos and pedal pushers. The music is a gentle spoof of the music of Bill Haley and Buddy Holly. Actually, as Casey explained, “Grease is not really a spoof of the 50s, but rather a spoof of the sentiments of the period. You know, when the biggest tragedies in your life would have been to have rain on prom night or to be alone at a drive-in.”What strikes on today about Grease is its innocence. To be sure, there is a lot of vulgar language and talk about sex, but Rizzo’s possible pregnancy notwithstanding, it’s mostly talk. There’s talk of a rumble, but it never comes off. One boy bares his bottom in public but offstage. There are no drugs, no drug-sniffing dogs, no police roaming Rydell’s halls, no metal detectors in school, no racial tensions, and no loners with hit lists. Grease begins as a reunion of Rydell High’s Class of ’59. But the only two alums identified in the first scene are the class valedictorian and the school cheerleader, neither a member of the Burger Palace Boys of the Pink Ladies. What happened to the others? Did they not graduate? Did they not attend the reunion? Did they slip into the background? Or is there no life for them after Rydell High? Perhaps if we returned to the school cafeteria, the High School Hop, the Burger Palace or the Twi-Light Drive-In, we would find Rizzo and Sandy, Kenickie and Danny, and all their friends, “all choked up”, arms around each other, singing, “Chang chang-a changitty-chang shoo-bop, We’ll always be together!”

Richard Gidez for SCCT

The Cast

Danny	Christopher Michael Gibbons
Sandy	Kelsey Lope

The Pink Ladies		The Burger Palace Boys
Rizzo	Katie Kensinger	Kenickie	Andrew Yearick
Frenchy	Abigail Beddal	Doody	Brett P. Keith
Marty	Adrianna Shembell	Roger	Ken Wozetek
Jan	Courtney Kaufman	Sonny	J. Thomas Pogue

Patty	Christina Mazur
Cha-Cha	Keely Byrne
Eugene	Jonathan Bojan
Vince Fontaine	Len Codispot
Johnny Casino	Topher Yorks
Teen Angel	Brett P. Keith
Miss Lynch	Patricia Young-Pochyba

Ensemble
Judy	Katie Brown
Simon McGuffy	Andy Kankey
Cheri Lynn	Amanda Memoli
Jack Bernard	Jason Meyer
Tom O’Neil	Will Mills
Michelle Wright	Leah Mueller
Madison Botts	Samantha Mullen
Violet Paige	Laura Snyder