Mt. Pleasant High School holds annual Variety Show

MT. PLEASANT - Mt. Pleasant High School senior Yorke Prough delivered the line confidently into the microphone.

'The past, the present and the future all walked into a restaurant. Boy was it tense.”

Parents and other community members groaned and chuckled at the joke.

Yorke and over 100 other middle and high school students wowed crowds with their acting and musical abilities last Sunday at the district's annual Variety Show.

Kids from across the two buildings participated in sketches, told jokes and performed in jazz bands and show choirs at the high school gym.

The Variety Show has been a long-held tradition in the district for over three decades. Proceeds from the show benefit the schools' Music Boosters program.

This past weekend, the district held two shows, featuring over 15 acts. The shows were opened by the middle school and high school jazz bands and closed out by performances by the show choirs.

'We really don't know what's going to happen when they get out there, and that's OK,” Marlene DePriest, the high school vocal teacher, said.

DePriest said the Variety Show is more student-led than other performances within the district.

'It always comes together. The students do an awesome job,” DePriest said. 'That's the good thing about the Variety Show, we put it all on them for the most part. They come up with the ideas of what they want to do … and they do stuff they want to do and have fun with. So it is a lot of last minute [planning], but that's the fun of it.”

She said the students' independence is part of the learning process too.

'It's all on [the students]. We look at them and say, ‘hey, you figure it out or we're not going to have a show, so put it together,'” DePriest said.

To become an act in the show, students do a screening with teachers, which includes either loosely explaining their skit's idea or performing a verse from their song.

For sophomore Brian Tiet, the show was an opportunity to branch out and 'put [himself] out there.”

Tiet provided guitar accompaniment for fellow sophomore Kylee Adams as she sang Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah.”

The student, who immigrated from Vietnam to Mt. Pleasant just a year ago, saw the show as an opportunity to get to know his fellow classmates.

'I've been playing guitar for one year … I'm excited. I was scared when I was thinking about it but we've been practicing a lot so I'm feeling kind of confident. We've been practicing for a week and a half,” Tiet said before heading onto stage.

'My parents aren't here today so that if I fail, they don't see it,” he added jokingly.

Adams, who belted out the well-known tune with ease, is also part of the school's show choir. Though her performance was her first solo act, Adams began performing at the Variety Show when she first joined show choir in 7th grade.

'I've always loved singing and always wanted an opportunity to sing that song,” she said.

Adams said she wanted to perform but didn't have anyone to perform with her until she asked Tiet over Snapchat if he wanted to play guitar.

'We only practiced three times,” Adams added.

For seasoned Variety Show pro, Abby Ryon, the show is a place for more 'quirky” acts that may not get time in other productions. The senior performed in a skit about boarding plane passengers, taken from a Saturday Night Live episode, as well as the jazz band and show choir.

'It's just really fun. There's a nice variety of acts and music and singing and it always keeps the audience engaged … we all have a little bit of goofiness inside of us and it's nice to make people laugh,” she said.

For Ryon, it was her last Variety Show.

'It's kind of sad, it's bittersweet,” Ryon said. 'It all comes to an end eventually.”