Gail Mowry (‘04) is the music and drama teacher at Hillsdale Academy. She is the director of the Academy’s production of “How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying,” which will be performed at the Sauk Theater in Jonesville at 7 p.m. on April 5, 2 and 7 p.m. on April 6, and 2 p.m. April 7. Tickets cost $7 each. Call 517-439-5120 for reservations.
Who organized the production?
I did. I am the music and drama teacher for the academy.
What is the best thing about putting on a musical with people of that age?
It’s the culmination of all the arts: the music, the dance, the rhetoric, and the theater, the visual. It’s the culmination of all the fine arts.
What is the most difficult thing about working with high school students?
The most difficult thing with our production is that at the academy, we’re a small school and so our kids, they do rigorous academics all day long and then they all do sports and then they all do drama. It’s just that they do everything. Schedules—that’s the hardest thing.
Please briefly explain “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and who selected it to be performed.
I selected it based on the talent I had. It’s a satire based on a book from the 1960s. It’s about how to climb the corporate ladder without really knowing anything—just knowing how to manipulate people and be in the right place at the right time.
Are you putting on a standard production of the play or are you adapting it to fit the tastes or needs of the academy?
It’s been adapted to appeal to a younger audience. In the original production there’s a lot of sexual humor and sexual harassment—well, things that would be viewed as sexual harassment today that in the 1960s wouldn’t have been. So we’ve lightened a little bit of that.
You’re performing it at a theater in Jonesville. Does the academy have a relationship with the theater? Is it fun to perform at a theater out of town?
Yeah, it’s nice because we don’t have the lighting or the seating capacity at our school to perform here. So it’s nice to go into a theater where we can have a live pit orchestra, where the lights are actual stage lights, instead of just overhead fluorescent lights. They’re very comfortable seats, which our patrons really enjoy. Just come and see it and be prepared to laugh.
-Compiled by Walker Mulley
