20th annual Variety Show celebrates ‘Legacy’
The reviews are in: Cedartown High School students sure know how to have a lot of fun up on stage.
The Cedartown High School theater department held their 20th anniversary show titled “Legacy” and celebrated both this year’s cast and those from the past at the Cedartown Performing Arts Center on March 29 and March 30.
After months of planning, the culmination of dance, music and localized skits came together in two nights of entertainment in the show’s final year at the CPAC. They’ll be moving along next year into a new space when the Fine Arts building addition at the high school is completed for the 2019-2020 school year.
The performances in March were also preceded by a cast and alumni party for those student producers from 1999 through to today who made the show happen.
Chris Reaves, who annually directs the students in planning as a class, said previously that the already-competitive program will get even more packed with different aspects of theater production with the expanded space and opportunities available, like letting students design their own lighting schemes for scenes.
“The title of the first variety show performance was the ‘Was Variety Show’, because I never thought we were going to do it again,” he said. “The next year the students came back and asked to do it again, so I said to myself ‘I’ll do one more.’ And then one more turned into this.”
The 2019 show titled “Legacy” looks to honor the longrunning tradition of fun for all and bring back some alumni to take part as well.
“For me, this is one of those neat community events that started by accident, and now people know about it,” Reaves said. “I know people who will come out of town to come see our show every year.”
Reaves said that this year’s performances were some of the best yet.
“We don’t usually do skits or dances that I would consider above everyone’s heads. It’s for entertainment,” Reaves said. “This is about the opportunity to produce a show and enjoy what we provide.”
Cultural appropriation is part of the fun of the follies, and among the various ideas that students come up with for the show, Reaves said he must have seen hundreds of Saturday Night Live-themed skits with local twists over the years. One of his favorites over the years involved Matt Foster, who at the time he was a member of the producing cast played Sean Connery in a remake of the SNL “Jeopardy”-themed skit.