Musical youth show is the ‘start of something big’
Some of the cast on stage during t‘We Will Rock You’ in Visual
CARLOW’S first summer youth musical took place at the end of August when 57 teenagers from all across the south-east performed on the George Bernard Shaw stage at Visual.
The futuristic musical was produced by Michael Florin Cahill, who runs the Evento Creative Arts Academy.
As for the storyline, “the clue is in the title,” said Michael. Written by Brian Elton with lyrics by Queen, the musical is set 100 years in the future when “technology has taken over the world and rock music has been hidden”.
Galileo, Scaramouche and the Bohemians battle to restore freedom, individuality and the power of live music in a world controlled by Globalsoft.
The audience joined in as the cast belted out Queen hits such as and, of course, .
“Absolutely phenomenal is the word I’d use,” said Michael, describing how the show went. “It’s mad, we started eight weeks before the show and they started off as strangers. By the end they were in floods of tears; they had formed a lot of new friends.” After auditions, the group of 15-21-year-olds spent eight weeks preparing for the show, rehearsing in Éire Óg and Presentation College.
The young performers who worked on the show came from Carlow, Cork, Donegal, Kildare, Kilkenny, Laois and Wexford every day. Every secondary school in Carlow was represented, according to Michael. While half of them had performed in shows with Evento before, the other half were new.
Marie Cashin choreographed the show and Clara Hutchinson directed the vocals.
Michael started the Evento organisation two years ago when he saw a lack of opportunities for young people to get involved in the arts in Carlow. His approach is “facilitation rather than a teaching”, giving the young people plenty of opportunities to come up with their own ideas, rather than being told what to do in a school environment.
The three nights at Visual were nearly completely sold out, with the cast and audience abuzz, proving there is a big market for summer youth musicals like this in the future.
“It was a first for Carlow,” said Michael, emphasising it was a positive story showing Carlow’s youth using musicals as an outlet. It is the start of something big.”
