On Friday night, the Portage High School Thespians Drama Club held its annual Variety Show in the school’s auditorium. This performance featured over 30 acts of singers, dancers, poets, and bands. It certainly lived up to the audience's expectations, but to also its historic reputation.
For over 40 years, the annual Variety Show at Portage High School has entertained audiences with its electric performances from dozens of talented students. This year was no different, with performers dazzling the audience all night.
“We have singers, dancers, bands, and we even have a hula act,” said Kevin Giese, the Portage High School Theatre and Auditorium Director. “And we will even be doing an excerpt from our upcoming spring musical, The Addams Family.”
The annual Variety Show is not only a fun night for students and their friends and family, but it’s also for a good cause. Every penny made Friday night is put towards the Portage High School Thespian Drama Club to fund their annual spring musical.
“We are a self-sustaining program at the school,” Giese explained. “All of our shows we put on and pay for ourselves. Everything we use, build and buy for our shows come from our fundraising efforts.”
The students took charge in making sure it was a successful night for the Thespians Drama Club. As a pre-show opener, the Portage High School Jazz Band performed a few numbers for the crowd as they waited for the show to start Friday night. The show started at 7:30 with a few opening remarks from Giese, who then introduced the Portage High School Choraliers, the school’s acapella group.
The show continued with students performing hit songs and dance routines, like Alyson Ponda who played Hey Soul Sister by Train with her ukulele and Logan Munoz and Jane Smith who performed a duet from the hit musical, Hamilton. The audience loved every performance, clapping and cheering fellow classmates on as they performed on stage.
“I don’t know if I would say I have a favorite so far,” said Nancy Jackson of South Haven. “Everyone who has gotten up on stage has been incredibly talented.”
One performance left the crowded auditorium blown away and received a thunderous applause. Seniors Erwin Harris and Tiffani Arnold read their spoken word poem, “Ode to Self-Care,” a poem dedicated to reminding black men and women to be confident in who they are.
“I was always kind of the quiet person, so since I’m a senior, I wanted to be loud and let people know who I am,” Arnold said. “I knew Erwin was into poetry and I knew I wanted him to do this with me.”
If the audience didn’t know Harris and Arnold at the start of the poem, they did at the end. People snapped and clapped while they read the poem, urging the poets to continue reading their beautiful poem.
“We were nervous before the performance, but we calmed each other down because doing this together was really important,” Harris said. “Society tends to dictate who we are, so we wanted to bring in a form of unity that people could look up to.”
After a brief intermission, the show continued with more stunning performances, like Christian Zepeda who played the Pirates of the Caribbean theme on the piano while dressed as a pirate and Diana Wilson who sang “Sunday Morning” by Adam Levine.
The closing number was a little treat for the audience; the cast of the spring musical, The Addams Family, performed one of the songs with the rest of the talented performers of the Variety Show joining them in song and dance.
Then that was a wrap for another successful Variety Show, featuring talented students and raising money to fund not only the spring musical, but also the arts and creativity.
“It’s ever so important to develop artistic expression, endeavors, and talent amongst our young people,” Giese said. “It is a cornerstone to a student being able to properly express themselves and that’s something I say every day.”
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