Choir students perform at annual Disney concert

Audras: ‘We decided to make the whole cruise ship crash and land in Hawaii’

The Disney Concert, performed by Oak Park High School choir students, took the audience on a Disney cruise Feb. 8. Instead of having the concert be song after song, the students created a storyline to go along with their performances.

“[As] one of the three villains in the show, we tried to wreak havoc on this Disney cruise ship, because we were frustrated that we never had the opportunity to sing the solos,” senior Emily Audras said. “With all the anger building up we decided to make the whole cruise ship crash and land in Hawaii.”

Senior Talia Vail commented on their choir rehearsal format.

“We go through the song, find weak points and [choir director Heidi Cissell] gives us advice on how to change it, just going through it over and over again and kind of stopping along the way to find your weakest spots and then make them stronger,” Vail said.

The concert was originally scheduled for Nov. 2018, but was postponed due to the Woolsey Fire.

“Because of the fires, [everything was] pushed so close together, now we [have] like five shows back to back to back,” junior Jacob Melton said. “Honestly, it was really hard, but for the most part we did pull it off.”

During the performance, some of the microphones on the singers were not functioning properly. However, despite technical difficulties, the audience had positive thoughts about the concert.

“I thought the show was really great,” freshman Sabrina Seal said. “I think it was great how all the singers pulled together after the technical difficulties and they just kept going like nothing ever happened.”