The Broadway in Chicago Illinois High School Musical Theatre Awards presented the 2024 Best Production Award to “Urinetown” staged by Homewood-Flossmoor High School.
The production was one of more than 80 entries in this year’s competition and was selected one of five finalists before winning the top prize in an announcement May 13 during a musical performance by the state’s 24 top high school performers at Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place.
Four H-F students were among the 24, including Jazmin Rhodes, who was selected best female performer, and fellow nominees Stella Hoyt, Bryce Stewart and Gabriel McKinney.
“We are all just riding high on the fact that you get Best Production, it’s like being named Best Picture (at the Oscars). The technical crew and the cast and the whole school was buzzing today (May 14) and it was really amazing just to feel the glory of all of them winning,” said Anne Calderón, the H-F English and theater teacher who directed the show.
“Urinetown” is a musical full of song and dance that highlights the comedy of the story about a Gotham-like city that finds itself without water to flush its toilets due to a 20-year drought. The government-enforced ban on private toilets leaves residents to use public amenities operated by a private company that is charging exorbitant rates for the privilege of doing a very personal act. Police round up those who can’t afford to pay for a flush and kill them. The act is called “being sent to Urinetown.”
The comedy, parts social and political commentary, amplifies the corruption, corporate greed, revolution and political paternalism, while parodying musical theater.
“It’s Brechtian style and it’s almost like making fun of the traditional aspects of theatre. There’s a lot of commentary on capitalism and political ideals and talking about it in a way that is laughable for all,” Calderón explained. She knew this group of students would love doing a comedy, but she wondered if they’d get the nuances. In the end, “They crushed it, and it was such a blast to watch them watch it click.”
Representatives of the sponsoring organizations visited the student productions to make their ratings. Calderón said she didn’t tell students what day the judges were in attendance, but they may have been present on the last of the three days when the audience gave the students a standing ovation in the middle of the show.
“In my life of going to theater and being in theater as a professional actor in the city after college, and I went to everything that I could see, and never did I see a standing ovation in the middle of the show,” she said.
After the cast sang “Run, Freedom, Run” Calderón said, “The audience all stood up and I was floored. I’d never seen that happen before, especially for a high school performance. I was just like, this is something special. Seeing it all done was just an incredible moment of theater, and as the director you spend so much time with these kids. They’re just like a part of your every day and your heart just bursts when they do these great things, and I was so proud of them.”
Calderón, whose been a member of the H-F faculty the last 11 year years, was Anne Litchfield when she participated in H-F theater productions before her 2005 graduation. She remembers the hard work and the fun she had, and she tried to share that with her students.
“I think the thing for these kids, and they knew it, was have a good time because you’ll never be in that space with those people doing this thing ever again,” she said. “And you have to step back and take it in and enjoy being on this stage at this moment because things move so fast. Life moves so fast, and I was really proud of them for just being in the moment and just being present and excited about this opportunity that they got.
“It’s incredible to watch them lift each other up and support them. That in and of itself is winning.”