It’s almost overwhelming how time flies. It was July 19, 2023, and our scripts for Footloose have not come in yet. Warren Underwood, Cypress Creek High School theater teacher, decided to continue rehearsals and focus on choreography instead of vocals causing a schedule delay. Starting on Saturday, August 12th, we began to rehearse from 9 am to 5 pm in temperatures reaching 100°F with no air-conditioning. It felt like we were in the desert. About two weeks later, we received our scripts. We began to work extremely hard, 2-6:15pm Monday vocal rehearsals, 2-5pm Tuesday and Thursday lead rehearsals, and 2-5:30pm Wednesday all cast rehearsals every Monday we would have vocal rehearsals from 2 p.m. – 6:15 p.m., every Tuesday and Thursday we would have rehearsals with the Leads only from 2 p.m. – 5 p.m., on Wednesdays we would have dance rehearsals with the entire cast from 2 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. With these hours, many had to balance their school, free time, and rehearsal time.
Senior Paige Thoms said, “I didn’t have much going on, so it was easy to balance. The only problem I occurred was transportation since my mom wasn’t always available.”
Starting September 13th, 2023, the entire Footloose cast would go to the Instructional Performing Arts Center (IPAC) right in front of Cypress Creek High School and run through the show to get a feel of the stage. Out of nowhere October hit. The opening night is one week away. Many people are fatigued, worried, excited, and tired. Underwood was concerned since many cast members were not putting in as much effort as before due to. Our show days finally arrived. Ten minutes before the show started, Underwood had his students stand in a circle and hold hands.
Junior Brooklynn Dooley said, “It’s basically a superstition that Underwood has where you join hands and the person to your left squeezes your hand and it continues around until it goes back to the person that first started it. If that doesn’t occur, then it will be a bad show.”
Everyone had their head down and it was so silent that you could hear a pen drop. Surprisingly no one was nervous, only excitement filled the air. Underwood gave everyone a good luck converse charm. Sophomore Angelina Spadaro said, “Every time I look at my charm, I get reminded of the first day everyone became started to become closer and start to understand that the show would not be a show without us.” Saturday was the final show day. We were stoked but we did not have a clue of the waterworks that would occur later that night. Everyone posted on their social media about how they felt about the journey of Footloose. “Goodbye Footloose.” “So heavily grateful for this experience and the opportunity I got to play Ariel Moore. Genuinely my favorite character I have played, and I loved the challenge it gave me with our differences and similarities,” said senior Anilem Munoz.
