SPOTLIGHT: Glee Club students take initiative to write Columbus tale

For 130 years, the Glee Club has been turning out an annual spring show. And every year it is a club joke that this year's show is "the best one ever." "But this year, we mean it," College sophomore Scott Romeika, a Glee Club member said. "Performance-wise, the music has never been more ready and we've got a great script," College senior and Glee Club President Jeff Coon said. "It's the most fun I've had [in a Club show]." This year's show, Cross Chris, Cross, centers on the adventures of Christopher Columbus. "I wouldn't say it's the actual story of Columbus," College sophomore and member Bryan Reid said. "There are a few twists that make it a little more interesting." Normally the show is written by the group's director, Bruce Montgomery. However, for the first time, two students, College sophomore Tom McManus and College junior Stuart Draper, wrote the show. Last spring, the group created a long-range committee consisting of two representatives from each class. "We discussed changes we wanted to make and things we wanted to see in the coming years and this was one of the things that came out of it," McManus said. A typical Glee Club show consists of music, ranging from show tunes to classical to modern, connected by a plot. "It all manages to fit in there somehow," Reid said. "This year it really tells a story rather than a lot of music strung together," Draper said. "People will be able to follow it and appreciate it." While the songs and basic plot were picked last spring, the actual book was not written until winter break. The students who wrote the script were challenged by being separated over Winter Break when they were writing the musical, with Draper in California and McManus in Massachusetts. "It was a bicoastal thing," McManus said. "We each set to work writing dialogues and mailed them to each other," McManus added. "Then we came back from break a day earlier than the other Club members and finished it then." Students also shared the responsibility for directing. Montgomery directed the musical numbers, but Draper, McManus, Coon, Wharton senior Myong Leigh, and Graduate student Rob Biron did the staging. Leigh also did the choreography for the show. "None of us are dancers," said Leigh. "We do things as they come to us, and usually it comes out pretty good. We just try to have fun." "They love us there in Phoenixville," Romeika said. "And we were received really well in Providence and Boston, too." Cross Chris, Cross opens tonight at 8 p.m. in the Zellerbach Theatre in Annenberg Center and continues through this weekend. Tickets are $6 for students, faculty and staff and $8 for the general public and can be bought on Locust Walk or at the door.

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