“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is a musical put on by the students here at North. According to the show’s director, Cheryl Schwartz, it is more of a difficult musical, but the students can handle the challenge. They all put time and effort into making the show the best they can, and they do it mostly on their own.

“It’s such a cool thing to see them utilize the skills they’ve learned the last two years and be able to just handle whatever; it allows them to then also have a leadership position that maybe wasn’t there before,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz explained how she and the other managers watched over them and helped them in their times of need, but it was always the students getting things done for themselves. This helped them learn to take action and leadership to ensure the success of the show.

“Usually what happens is that everyone panics, and then the show just comes together. In the beginning, rehearsals were pretty good, but later everyone was really high on anxiety and stressed, so they weren’t taking it that seriously. After we sang with the pit and the choir, though, it was great and everyone knew their stuff and really worked on their stuff,” said junior Hillary Collins.

The actors in the musical run their rehearsals by themselves, with the advice from their teachers. By doing this, they get a sense of independence to make the show theirs, and they learn how to solve their problems themselves. Even without the teachers’ help at all times, the students still have their way to run the show well and have a way of communicating with the rest of the cast.

“We mainly ask each other for tips and work on our music and memorization with recorded cues,” said sophomore Jaylyn Walker.

The musical’s opening night was on March 6, and will continue on the weekend of March 13. According to Cheryl Schwartz, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is a harder musical that she wanted the students to try and tackle, and she said she wasn’t let down so far.

All photos by Total Image Photographics