[dropcap]H[/dropcap]arry walks into the Dark Forest to confront Voldemort, having made his decision to die to save his friends. Slowly, he walks towards Voldemort, and Voldemort kills him. Or does he?

This is the end of the story that we grew up with the Harry Potter series. The first book was published in 1998 and the first movie was released in 2001.

StarKid Productions, a theatre company based in Chicago, created a musical dedicated to the series in 2009, A Very Potter Musical written by Matt Lang, Nick Lang and Brian Holden with music written by Darren Criss and A.J. Holmes. It takes bits and pieces from the Harry Potter series and puts them all into one musical, adding comedy.

South’s Repertory Theater class perform this play March 22 and 23. Students took on all of the responsibilities involved in the production process.

“All the rehearsals were held by students. We had one parent there at all times [to supervise], but other than that we really didn’t have outside help,” senior and co-director Maureen Barry.

Senior Kyle Jones also co-directed the musical, and felt that the collaborative effort of two directors was better than one.

“If there was only one director and that director was acting, there would be no way for anyone to actually see what’s going on [onstage]; it would’ve been pretty difficult otherwise,” he said.

However, with two people directing, there were certain challenges that had to be overcome

“The fact that [Maureen and I are] students made it hard for us to keep the attention of all the other students. They goof off and joke around thinking we won’t do anything,” Jones said.

The original production had many scenes that had profane content, which would cause some issues in a school setting. To make the musical more appropriate for the school, Jones and Barry needed to go to the administrators with an edited version of the script, and the administrators would have to okay it from there. Barry also mentioned that their teacher was a help in getting the script okayed by the administration.

“Our teacher had read the script and she did not like how dirty it was, so she was the one who urged us to talk to administration,” Barry said.

Jones remembers that the word ‘snit’ (meaning a fit of irritation) was one word they used to make the musical less vulgar, while the word still sounded similar.

“We had to run it through the administration to make sure we could do some of the jokes. Some of the jokes we couldn’t end up doing, but we were able to get by without them,” he said.

Barry remembers what it was to make a successful production.

“Setting up what scenes we’re going to run, what times we’re going to do this, as well as double checking that we had all our props and costumes and set pieces ready to go,” she said.

Senior Blake Beardall (Dumbledore) said, “I think we did a really great job for a student-led production.”

Senior Adam Winney (Ron Weasley) agrees that the production went well.

“One of the things I love about a South show is that it doesn’t come alive until we have an audience. During rehearsals, especially during a comedy, you don’t feel really optimistic about the show because you don’t hear anyone laughing, but when you’re finally up on stage during a show like this where it’s really funny and everyone’s laughing, that’s when you know the show went well,” he said.

By: Nathan Thimmesch