Hillcrest High’s award-winning high school theatre department has an incredible start on its season.

Recently, the 57 student-actors and five-member Tech Olympics team returned from the 48th annual Utah Shakespeare High School Festival in Cedar City where they beat more than 100 teams to sweep first place in all major contests: ensemble, duo/trio scene, monologue, rigging and stage management to win the overall sweepstakes and overall Tech Olympics.

They also earned top four places in their second entries in duo/trio scene and monologue as well as in tech portfolio and sound. Additionally, Ryan Rasch and Riley Thompson received $1,000 college scholarships and Claire Bartlett and Cooper Runnells received $500 acting camp scholarships.

“Our ensemble piece is a compilation from the play ‘Coriolanus,’ which director Josh Long did the first year he was teaching at Hillcrest,” said Michelle Abbott, Hillcrest’s student and director support and costume designer. “A big concern of ours always is, are there enough roles? The other thing is the importance of our ensemble. We always look for pieces that will give our ensemble the opportunity to work and learn and craft lead characters. ‘Coriolanus’ has great places where they can be characters as well as normal citizens in a town. ‘Coriolanus’ also gives students an opportunity to find a story in Shakespeare that feels familiar and that they can correlate what’s happening in our in our political world now.”

In addition to watching other high school groups perform, the Hillcrest Shakespeare team saw the Utah Shakespeare Company perform “Much Ado About Nothing” and “The Mountaintop,” a fictional production based on the last night of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

The thespians returned to jump into rehearsals of “Hadestown: Teen Edition.”

“Hadestown” is a musical with music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell. It follows Orpheus’ mythical quest to overcome Hades and regain the favor of his one true love, Eurydice. Although the teen edition is full length, its vocal arrangements are better for teen voices, Abbott said.

“There are a few optional things that differ with the teen edition and a couple different harmonies,” she said.

The show will be at 7 p.m., Nov. 21-23 and again on Nov. 25 on Hillcrest’s stage, 7350 S. 900 East. Ticket sales, including season tickets, will be available at www.hillcresttheatre.com.

“We were wrestling with choosing a show last spring when this opened. We were surprised because shows do not open to regional or school youth until after they’re no longer running on Broadway, and ‘Hadestown’ still is running on Broadway. Since it’s become a popular show, we knew this might be our only chance for a long time to be able to do it so we snatched up that contract,” she said.

Abbott said some of the thespians have seen the Broadway production when Long leads student groups to visit New York City. 

“We’ve seen a few years in a row because it just had a lot of good storytelling in it and interesting ensemble work in it. It’s neat how they’ve taken Greek mythology and given it a bit of a modern twist and it has neat harmonies for vocalists that are unique,” she said. “This is our highest audition group we’ve had for our musical since COVID. We have a cast of about 160 kids that does not include our musicians or our technicians, so we’ve been incorporating our ensemble more than is usually expected for this show and finding places for them to be involved and create characters for themselves. This way, they have opportunities to craft something while also learning, sometimes complex choreography.”

During the run, Long also will be directing a play, “A Little Piece of You: An Atypical Musical” in London’s Drury Theatre. His 17-year-old niece, Kjersti, composed songs for the production and local playwright, Melissa Leilani Larson, wrote the script.

During his time in the West End, a former student of Long’s will step in to direct “Hadestown.”

“I really love the theatre community in London; I’ve always said working there is the only other thing I could ever imagine myself doing, other than teaching high school theatre, particularly here at Hillcrest,” Long said. “I get to have the best of both worlds.”

Long plans to return for the production of “Lord of the Flies.”

“It’s an all-male cast because that is how it’s written in the book, but Josh got special permission to have an all-female cast as well so we’re going to do an all-male cast one night and then, the next night, will be an all-female cast,” Abbott said, adding the audience can come to both casts’ productions to see “what it feels like to have that same story told from both casts.” 

The storyline, which follows the book by the same name by William Golding, is about a group of British boys who are stranded on an island after their plane crashes during war time and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. 

“It gets pretty aggressive and violent, OK, which is the whole point of the story,” she said, adding the show is appropriate for middle schoolers and up. “It’s going to be performed in a unique configuration with the audience on stage so it will be a more immersive experience for our audience.”

The show will be performed at 7 p.m., Jan. 22-25, 2025.

On March 13-15, 2025 and again on March 17, Hillcrest students will perform “Beautiful Burnout.”

The play is about a group of amateurs who have dreams to become professional boxers, so Hillcrest students already have been holding boxing workouts, getting familiar with the 10 punching bags in the black box theatre.

“This show is really fascinating in that it includes a female boxer, who’s trying to make her way in a gym that only trains men, but she has nowhere else to go, so she’s trying to prove herself and her abilities,” Abbott said. “A lot of times for our spring show, we’ll choose something that can learn combat training or stunt training, because someone who may be in the show, may feel a connection or find a way to identify with something. So doing a show about boxing may make kids pay attention who might not and have a broader appeal.”

Also in March, student will perform in a yet-to-be-named one act for the region competition. State is in April.

The theatre season wraps up with Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline.”

“A lot of people consider ‘Cymbeline’ to the Shakespeare’s fairytale where you have the princess who has the wicked stepmother and mistaken identities. We have comedy, we have romance and evil plots going on, and it is quite a ride,” she said “We’re going to lean heavily into the fairytale aspects of that story. It’s going to be colorful and fun. We also will have an original musical score by Christian Huff, whom we’ve used in the past.”

The show will be performed May 15-17, 2025.

“We’re excited to end our season with a little bit of joy after getting good life lessons from ‘Lord of the Flies,’” Abbot said. “The shows fit into our team theme, ‘Boldness be my friend.’ We’re offering our students an opportunity to step forward into spaces they might not normally see themselves in and see the world in a new light.”

Hillcrest, which is a 10-time Shakespeare competition champion, three-time Utah High School Musical Theatre Awards’ best ensemble and eight-time Utah High School Activities Association state champion, was the winner of the Best of State awards in theatrical education this year. They also performed the U.S. premiere of “The James Plays.”

“Our students had a lot of achievement, but that isn’t the main focus of our program; it’s a way our world often measures success,” Abbott said. “We offer our students opportunities to compete, because competition can really help and push us to grow. As we were competing last year as well, our students really stepped forward and worked hard. Last season, we did win some accolades in our achievements, including Best of State, and the students’ reaction was so sweet. It’s such an honor; we were so grateful to be recognized, and we appreciate our parent and community volunteers who accumulate about 10,000 volunteer hours to support our program. It really was a beautiful honor for our community.” λ