Photo Flash: The Performer's School Presents LES MISERABLES and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

A cornerstone of the experience offered by The Performer's School, a musical theatre training program for fourth through eighth graders located on Chicago's North Shore in Highwood, is the opportunity to perform for audiences in a fully staged production of a hit Broadway musical. Before the pandemic, 26 fourth and fifth graders had been cast in the school's planned productions of DISNEY'S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST JR., and 40 sixth through eighth graders were cast in LES MISÉRABLES SCHOOL EDITION. With in-person performances prohibited under the quarantine, The Performer's School co-founders Stacey Flaster and Liz Fauntleroy found a way to provide these students with an equally satisfying, but COVID-safe, performing experience. The finished products will be streamed from May 21-23 and 28-30 for LES MISÉRABLES and May 28-30 and June 4-6 for DISNEY'S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST JR.

Check out photos below!

Flaster and Fauntleroy brought in the digital production company Marston McCoy Media, a new firm founded by veteran Chicago theater director and Marriott Theatre Associate Artistic Director Peter Marston Sullivan, to produce video productions of the two musicals. Sullivan had been experimenting with editing technology that would allow performers to be recorded individually in front of green screens and edited so that the actors appear to be performing together on a stage, and he saw a way to use this technique to meet the demands of a large cast musical theatre production. As employed for the two Performer's School productions, Sullivan's technique creates the effect of having from two to 40 singers and actors appear to be performing on a single stage simultaneously, in front of elaborate and detailed backgrounds designed by three-time Jeff Award winner Jeffrey D. Kmiec.

Film production and editing techniques allowing use of closeups and special effects are being used to further create a cinematic product that is more visually engaging and satisfying than many of the Zoom readings that have become common in the past year. Typically, such Zoom performances have relied on actors performing from separate locations and appearing on separate cameras, a format that has become predictable and can lack much of what makes theater and film so exciting.

LES MISÉRABLES SCHOOL EDITION will stream on May 21, 22, 23, 28, 29 and 30. and DISNEY'S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST JR. will stream on May 28, 29, 30 and June 4, 5, and 6. Screening times are Fridays and Saturdays at 7 pm and Sundays at 2 pm for both musicals. For ticket information, please visit www.theperformersschool.com.

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