North Penn High School’s Thespians present 17 Again, a play sharing the story of Mike O’Donnell, a high school basketball star with a bright future, who threw it all away to marry his girlfriend and raise their child. However, 20 years later Mike’s marriage has failed, his kid thinks he’s a loser and his job is going nowhere. He gets a chance to correct past mistakes when he miraculously turns into a teenager, but in trying to change his past, he may jeopardize his future.
The story vividly displays that life doesn’t always work out the way we want, or expect it to. North Penn’s Thespian Troupe 5464 president, Saachi Sainath, speaks on the play as a whole.
“The play has a very inspiring message about unconventional choices, accountability for your actions, and making amends,” Sainath said.
Typically North Penn Theatre produces a play in the fall, but this year they’ve opted to do a musical. A play revolves around a story, brought to life via dialogue, conversely, a musical is brought to life with music.
“Generally when we do a play in the fall, we only have acting rehearsals but this a musical [not a play], so we have been working double time to create a product that usually takes us a couple of months,” Sainath explained.
17 Again’s licensing company, MTI [Music Theatre International] hand-selected North Penn to be one of the first high schools to put this show in action.
“We are one of the first high schools to do the show, and we were selected by MTI to do it and raise awareness about it, being one of the schools to bring this musical to light is a big challenge, and having no tracks or recordings to go off of has been challenging but also been fun at times, we’ve grown a lot as dancers and actors and singers in this process” Sainath proclaimed.
The musical’s display of character regret, expectations, and successes can be viewed live at North Penn High School on November 16, 17, and 18 at 7:30 pm and November 19 at 2:00 pm. The clock is ticking to get your tickets, find them at npenn.org/theatre!