The stage lights are beaming and the actors are in place. “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is Drama’s latest production and the last show will be in the Auditorium tonight at 7:00 pm. Tickets are $5 for students and seniors, and $7 for General Admission.

Dan Franke, drama director, decided on this show last January. He states that he choose this show because, “…I have loved the show since the first time I’ve heard it and I looked around at the kids that we have here right now, and it was a perfect mix of male and female parts and I knew I could put an ensemble in so I just knew it was sort of right, and we did quite a bit of, sort of,  Debbie Downer shows last year so I wanted to make sure we had some kind of comedy to start out the year and…get everybody interested and back in the theatre,”

Franke wasted no time. With the help of assistant director Elizabeth Doney, junior, he started preparing for the show in May and was already holding castings by June. Once the cast was selected they started memorizing lines over the summer. During rehearsals, which usually lasted between three to four hours, the cast covered lyrics, singing, staging, and lines.

“The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee” is a comedic Broadway musical, with an assortment of cast and characters.  The six main spellers are; Charlito “Chip” Tolentino played by Nathan Smith, sophomore, an athletic Boy Scout who sings a song about his painful ‘distraction’. Leaf Coneybear, played by Stewart Lindquist, junior, goes into a hypnotic state when spelling his words. Marcy Park, played by Hannah Patterson, junior, is an over achiever who no longer wishes to be an over achiever. Logainne “Schwarzy” Schwartzandgrubenierre, played by Carolina Santigosa, junior, is the youngest, and most political, of the spellers. William Morris Barfée, played by Andrew Howard, senior, is an arrogant speller who uses his ‘magic foot’ to aid him. And Olive Ostrovsky played by Maggie Musco, sophomore, made friends with the dictionary at a very young age and is constantly saving a seat for her father.

A few new faces come with this year’s cast as a couple of chorus men chose to audition for the musical. Andrew VanWert, senior, talks about his purpose behind doing the show. “Well the main reason was to do a show with Franke…and a lot of my chorus friends were doing it… and I went ahead and did it and it was a lot of fun and I’m really happy that I did.”

According to Lisa Osorio, senior, the performance was “great”, her favorite character being, Andrew Howard who she considered to be hilarious.

See what Drama has in store for their audience, in “The 25th Annual Putman County Spelling Bee” before it’s over.