Classic fairytale comes to life at Strathmore high

Times Reporter

 

The classic tale of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was shown on the Strathmore High School, SHS, stage this week. The show began with a matinee on Jan. 15 and played until Jan. 18, and was performed by the choir and dance class. 

The story of Belle, which is the French name equivalent of Beauty, and the Beast was first written in 1740, and was made into a Walt Disney film in 1991. 

Rachel Ellis was one of the girls who had a chance to play Belle on the SHS stage. She said it was at the beginning of the school semester her class was told they would be doing a production of ‘Beauty and the Beast.’ She said the students began right away to figure out what they would need to do to prepare for auditions.   

“I was really happy, there was two of us who tried out and both of us got it, so that was really great,” said Ellis. 

“It was one of those things that you don’t really watch as you grow up,” said Ellis about ‘Beauty and the Beast’ 

“I think it was two or three years ago I re-watched it and then just fell  in love with it again, because it actually was just a great movie.”

The realism of the movie is her favourite thing about it. 

“I think how real it is… she falls in love with somebody just completely based on who they are as a person and I think that’s a really great lesson that we should be teaching kids, and we should be teaching everyone really,” said Ellis. 

She has also performed in Hairspray, the Nightmare before Christmas, and Wicked on the SHS stage. 

Though her thoughts began to waver from a career on the stage over the last few years, this production helped rekindle that spark. 

“It was what I had planned to do forever, for as long as I can imagine. Then I kind of just thought about it, because it’s something that’s really hard to go to school for and to be really successful at,” said Ellis. 

“Right now I’m just trying to really figure out what I want to do. Being in a production like this is really sparking that love for me and I’m trying to figure out what to do.”