North Hills' spring musical 'Catch Me if You Can' to be shown at 'drive-in'

Even during the pandemic, members of the North Hills High School Drama Club are sticking to an old entertainment business adage — the show must go on.

Throughout the summer, members of the cast and crew followed the district’s guidelines to prevent the spread of coronavirus by gathering for socially distanced rehearsals in preparation for the musical comedy “Catch Me if You Can.”

During those sessions, a video of their performance was created for a drive-in movie-style presentation that will be held in the parking lot of The Block Northway shopping center in Ross on Sept. 25 and 26.

The spring musical was canceled in March because of the governor’s order that all school buildings in the state be closed due to the covid-19 pandemic, which was issued just five days before live performances were scheduled to take place.

“At first we thought the shutdown would only last about two weeks and we would simply be able to postpone the show,” said Shaun Cloonan, the show’s producer. “But when it was extended, we realized that wasn’t going to happen.”

Chelle Zimmerman, the district’s director of activities, said the idea to make a video of the performance during dress rehearsals came while school officials were developing a health and safety plan for athletics and activities.

“While trying to figure out how we could make the video, we came up with the idea of showing it at a drive-in, which the superintendent thought was a great idea,” she said.

The show’s director, Lauren Sarazen, said a number of things had to be changed to guard the health of the cast and crew, including buying additional headset microphones so actors didn’t have to share them and halting the taping session after each number so the stage and equipment could be sanitized.

“They couldn’t be super close to each other, so we had to redesign some of the numbers in the show to adhere to the 25-person limit in the space we were using,” she said.

Adjustments also were made to the “blocking” — the musical theater term for an actor or dancer’s movement on stage — and technical effects “so we could produce a show as close to the original version as we could but still keep students safe,” Sarazen said.

Cloonan said one casualty of producing a show during the pandemic was the ability to use live musicians.

“We would normally have close to the entire ensemble of musicians,” he said. “But it was decided that there would not be a way to do that safely, so we paid to get a professional soundtrack for the show.”

The district will display the show on one of the large screens Ross Township uses for its movies in the park.

The drive-in will be set up in the southwest parking lot in front of the Carter’s and Lands End stores and vehicles will be parked in every-other-space to allow for social distancing.

Restaurants at The Block Northway, including Piada Italian Street Food, Dave & Busters, Blaze Pizza and Wahlburgers, are offering special menus that can be ordered ahead of time.

Cloonan said that as of Sept. 15, only a handful of the 100 spaces available for each performance were still available. Reservations are being booked through the drama club’s website.

“Catch Me if You Can” is based on a 1980 book about Frank Abagnale Jr., whose exploits as a con artist who cashed several million dollars worth of bad checks by impersonating an airline pilot, physician, teacher and lawyer before he was 19-years-old.

The book was adopted into a 2002 film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Abagnale and Tom Hanks as an FBI agent who pursues him.