The Rainier Players, Rainier Highs brand new drama club, presented its premiere performance, Theater High, the last two weekends.

The show was a semi-original musical, featuring songs from numerous prominent Broadway shows, including such Tony award winners as Hair, South Pacific and Wicked. The Book is an original story, based on true and fictional events culled from the experiences of the students themselves. Based on an idea by 16-yr-old Leah Burke, and scripted by a collaborative team of eight of the Rainier Players, Theater High is a delightful mixture of mischief, mayhem and mockery.

This production marked the return to our area of director Nancy Hillman, who ran the Drew Harvey Theater. She is joined in this endeavor by many Drew Harvey alumni, such as Kent Cissna on sets, Daleen Haifley as Vocal Director, Ted Fredericks, Drama Director for the school, Galen Wicks, keyboard accompanist, Jim Haifley on lights, Rae Simpson supervising costumes and props, and Mary McComb as House Manager.

This writer and his wife joined quite a large number of folks Super-Bowl Sunday night to our delight. Rainier has always been in the shadow of the much-larger Yelm district and to see the talent this School mustered was impressive, to say the least. In speaking with Nancy Hillman after the show, she said that the number of participants were changing right up until the first show, due to many factors. Twenty-one students hung in there for 4 months of practice to refine their talents in this fabulous show. Drama Director for the school Ted Fredericks is a familiar face from many of Drew’s successes, in particular the musicals. His pairing with Ms. Hillman was a welcome sign of a return of these types of quality performances in our area. The value to the students is huge, as these works bring out persistence, commitment and facing fear of standing in front of the public that will aid these young people thoughout their lives. We hope to see more from Mr. Fredericks’ students!

There were so many people involved in this production and they all deserve our community’s applause & support.

The cast of 6 males & 15 females are listed by name in alphabetical order definitely impressed all of us in-audience:

Asantewaa Armah
Leah Burke
Alyx DelaCruz
Bekah Dolan
Kayla geist
Caitlin Hoffman
Shelby Lacy
Katie McCann
Chelsea McComb
Kalen McCrae
Jessie Reichel
Jacob Ripp
Julisa Schidleman
Guy Simpson
Kate Simpson
DJ Stiles
Courtney J. Taylor
Ross Taylor
Courtney Thom
Vera Welch
Tyler West