The Rider Theatre department will be putting on their 25th annual lip sync show, “Memorial: A Lip Sync Legacy” this weekend.
It will be performed this Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m., and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the auditorium. Tickets can be purchased at the door and they are $5 for students and $10 for adults.
This year the show will celebrate the legacy of Rider lip sync by paying tribute to previous shows. The directors were given a list of songs from every previous lip sync show and asked to select from those songs.
Drama club vice president junior Shannon Cook is directing two lip syncs. One she is doing solo and the other she is co-directing with senior Logan Beaman.
“After looking through the list of past songs, I chose ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ and ‘Stayin’ Alive’ because I felt that they had the potential to be very entertaining and fun for both my casts, Logan and myself,” Cook said.
Cook is honored to be a director in his final production and hopes to use this opportunity as a way to encourage others to continue to participate in theater and entertain audiences.
“People should come see lip sync because it’s better to come see a fun production than sit around at home and be bored and lame for an evening,” Cook said.
While student directors are usually juniors and seniors in the productions class, sophomore Rylee Cargal was given the chance to direct this year.
“Being a sophomore director makes me feel very loved,” Cargal said. “But, it does add a lot of pressure in trying to keep up with the amazing juniors and seniors.”
Cargal, who is directing one song, wanted to put different spin on the storyline, rather than what one might expect while listening to it.
“I picked ‘Pretty Woman’ because I wanted the song to be flipped from the love story aspect into a self-love perspective,” Cargal said. “Kind of a girls-supporting-girls type of thing.”
Junior Rosalie Alfert, who has participated in theater and lip sync since her freshman year, feels honored to be a part of the last group to put on this traditional production.
Alfert, who is directing “Ghostbusters” and “Time of Your Life,” began the process of working on her songs in May.
“I started mine pretty early,” Alfert said. “Everybody did theirs differently, but I wrote a cue list. I just went all the way through every single second of the song and wrote down what we were doing. Then I wrote a script for it with everything on it and I performed it.”
A huge challenge faced by the theatre department this year has been a drop in participation, and lip sync has been no exception to this.
“I would say the biggest challenge is people dropping and having to fill in for them and finding new people,” Alfert said. “I think all of us directors have gotten really good at communicating though, and having to go out of our comfort zones to ask people ‘hey can you do me a favor?’ and we’ve learned a lot from this about how to problem solve.”
However, despite these challenges, the show must go on. Alfert and her fellow directors have worked together with their casts and crew to put together a special tribute to the past 25 years of lip sync.
“In my opinion, this is going to be the best lip sync you’ll ever watch,” Alfert said. “We have more shows than ever, in my opinion we have the best directors ever and the best casts ever. We’re going to finish this off with a boom.”
MEMORIAL: A LIP SYNC LEGACY
When: Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Where: Rider Auditorium
Tickets: $5 for students and $10 for adults
Song List
Are You Going To Be My Girl – Keegan Potter
All My Lovin – Keegan Potter
Video Killed the Radio Star – Shannon Cook
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough – Emily Kintner
1985 – Grayson Thomas
Don’t You Forget About Me – Grayson Thomas
Ghostbusters Theme – Rosalie Alfert
Time Of Your Life – Rosalie Alfert
Good Girls Go Bad – Kylie Goins
Spice Up Your Life – Kylie Goins
Stayin’ Alive – Logan Beaman and Shannon Cook
Pretty Woman – Rylee Cargal
