Mountain View High School has debuted the Thompson School District musical season Thursday with “The SpongeBob Musical,” a humorous counterpoint to the drama department’s last show, “Macbeth.”
“My personal directorial philosophy when I program a season is to give my actors as broad a theatrical experience in high school as possible,” said Director JD Jacob, who leads the school’s theater department. “So if they want to go work, they’ve done everything. They’ve done Shakespeare, they’ve done comedies, they’ve done farce, they’ve done musicals, heavy drama, all of it. So I knew I wanted to do the ‘Tragedy of Macbeth,’ knew I wanted to do it forever. So SpongeBob was a logical pairing.”
That’s not to say the show is campy, he added. Jacob wanted to avoid a “SpongeBob on Ice” style performance, with bulky mascot-style costumes that obscure the characters’ faces, and put on a real show with themes that he sees as germane to the real world, namely that of SpongeBob Squarepants’ “oppressive optimism.”
“The musical is really about figuring out who you are, and that you’re enough,” he said. “Each character goes through this journey of self discovery. We were really trying to create an honest performance, and its hard to do that if you’re stuck in the character voice and the TV show.”
The story, which uses characters now familiar to both children and adults since the television show of the same name debuted in 1999, follows the residents of the town of Bikini Bottom discovering that a volcano is set to erupt.
“Is that something we should be worried about?” asks Squidward Tentacles, played by senior Bryce McRoy, as the sky turns red and the ground begins to shake for the third time in the play. SpongeBob himself, played by senior Cammy Garcia, is initially dismissive.
“Breaking news!” interjects news anchor Perch Perkins, played by senior Paxton Sundquist-Siegl, during an emergency broadcast. “That is something we should be worried about!”
The voice work was difficult, said both leads, Garcia and junior Maiki Quevedo, who plays Patrick Star.
“Whenever I think about Patrick, I’m thinking that I’m going to bring Patrick, but I also add more of my own voice to it too,” Quevedo said. “I want to keep it how I want to portray Patrick, not necessarily how people see Patrick.”
The musical will be staged 7-9 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 2-4 p.m. Saturday at Mountain View High School, 3500 Mountain Lion Drive. Tickets are $10 for students and $15 for adults and are available at mountainview.booktix.net.
