On Thursday, Nov. 7, students heard the news of the change in this year’s musical. Mixed views have spread about the change from Emma to Xanadu, but Courtney Gibson has several reasons for the switch. 

“Emma offers a lot of roles for a lot of people,” Gibson said. “This is a much smaller cast show which is why I hesitated to pick this show, but we didn’t have a lot of interest in Emma so I was like ‘Well that’s fine, we’ll just do the smaller cast show that I have really just wanted to do anyway all along.’”

Many students agree with the change and are super excited to start preparing for the new show which will run March 12-14, but others had already worked hard to prepare for the Emma audition and are still getting ahold of the change to Xanadu. 

“I am a little bit iffy about it, because I was already prepared for Emma and now we have Xanadu,” Nadia Miller said. “Everyone likes it so I’m excited as well, but I’ve been texting everybody like ‘Are you guys ready for this?’ and they are like ‘yeah I’ve been wanting this musical, rather than Emma.’” 

The positive attitude toward Xanadu is spreading and everyone who saw it at nationals for She Kills Monsters is especially excited to see where Gibson takes it. 

“Our troupe got to see Xanadu when we went to nationals,” sophomore Legend Chapman said, “and so everyone who has seen it has seen the love and the passion of the story and the way it can be presented. It’s really funny, it has character, and I know Gibson can put her own twist into it.”

Gibson loves the whole idea of this musical and for her fifteenth year involved in the musicals at St. Charles High School, this is sure to be impactful year for everyone.

 “I really love this musical, it’s one of my favorite musicals of all time, it’s silly and it’s funny and it’s just everything I love about musical comedy,” Gibson said, “and it involves disco and roller skates.”

Whether this be some students third or fourth show, many are new and while switching musicals might have been a bit of a shock to some, everything including the dates of auditions are going to stay the same other than the audition packets. Gibson encourages those who are interested to audition and give it their all. 

“Make bold choices, have fun, and do not be afraid to make a fool out of yourself,” Gibson said. “The more you do, the better you do.”