Finding Joy is about five sisters – from left, Kendra Dixon (Joy), Sophia Erdogan (Hazel), Cadence Robinson (Mary), Allie Doran (Beth) and Astrid van Zijl (Ruby) – who come together after the death of their father to sell their family home.Shay Conroy/The Globe and Mail
For most high schoolers, spring is synonymous with endings: Kids graduate. Courses wrap up in a flurry of exams. Championship games are played, won and lost. Lockers are cleaned out. Yearbooks are signed.
But for theatre students, spring means a musical – and usually a big one. And while secondary schools across Canada have programmed standard Broadway fare – bestsellers such as Mamma Mia!, Beauty and the Beast and Shrek – one program in Belleville, Ont., is getting ready to put on an original musical, featuring songs by the Barenaked Ladies.
The choice to create Finding Joy, rather than license an existing show, was rooted as much in politics as in artistry, said David Reed, a high-school music teacher since 1999. According to Reed, the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board directed staff to divert school funds away from the United States as much as possible, owing to the trade war spurred by President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
David Reed created the musical from scratch, tailored specifically to the students he knew would audition for it.Shay Conroy/The Globe and Mail
“But pretty much every musical in the world is licensed through New York City, where the publishing rights are held,” Reed said. “Even Anne of Green Gables, the most Canadian show ever."
And so Reed got to work, writing a new piece tailored specifically to the students he knew would audition for it at Eastside Secondary School. Finding Joy, which plays in Belleville from May 27 to 30, follows five sisters who come together after the death of their father to sell their family home – and to work through their relationships with each other.
“There are big emotional moments, but I knew going in that they could handle it,” Reed said of his students. “They’ve so fearlessly dug into these big feelings.”
By creating a musical from scratch, Reed was able to avoid some of the disappointment that can come from producing a more popular title: “It’s tough for the students if you’re not a great singer, and you get stuck with a leftover part,” he said. “This was an opportunity to really give every kid a chance to shine.”
Younger actors, he said, often passed over for lead roles in high-school settings, were able to have speaking parts.
To get the rights to the songs, Reed listened to every Barenaked Ladies album – 18 in total – and put together a proposal for the band, outlining the story he intended to tell with their music. The group’s management was enthusiastic about the project, Reed said, and so he was able to move forward with writing while rights were sorted out (and eventually granted).
The tight-knit cast members have been able to leverage their friendship to further inform the storytelling of the show.Shay Conroy/The Globe and Mail
Keeping in mind that most of the songs would be sung by girls – gender parity is a rarity in high-school theatre – Reed transposed the songs to where they would be comfortable in his students’ voices, recording multi-instrument backing tracks at home. Give It Back to You closes the first act, a quintet between the five sisters; Tired of Fighting with You, Odds Are, When I Fall and Crawl are each solos. A number of group numbers with the ensemble – Gonna Walk, for instance – round out the tracklist, with a few more Barenaked Ladies songs woven in between the deep cuts.
“It’s been a huge project, but it’s been exciting from Day 1,” he said. “I disappeared to my cottage every weekend in September and October and just wrote and wrote and wrote.” A rudimentary workshop with a few trusted English teachers helped the script evolve into what it is now.
The students are similarly enthusiastic about the work – if there were any hard feelings about not getting to do a show like Mean Girls or Heathers for their spring musical, they’re long gone.
“There’s no precedent for us to look at as a reference while we build these characters,” said 17-year-old Sophia Erdogan, who plays Hazel, the youngest sister in Finding Joy. “We really get to invent this as we go.”
According to Astrid van Zijl, 18, Reed’s theatre students have had to complete assignments to develop their characters in the show. A three-page autobiography, for instance, helped students deepen their work onstage by forcing them to consider details that might not be obvious in Reed’s script.
“You don’t get to consider those things much when you do a pre-existing musical or show,” she said. Cadence Robinson, 17, agreed: “There’s no outline we have to follow, because we get to make that outline,” she said. “It’s awesome.”
From left: Erdogan, van Zijl and Robinson pose on the set.Shay Conroy/The Globe and Mail
The students playing the sisters – Kendra Dixon and Allie Doran, in addition to Erdogan, Robinson and van Zijl – are all very close. Playing siblings has been no huge lift: The girls have been able to leverage their friendship to further inform the storytelling of the show. (And while seniors Erdogan, Robinson and van Zijl plan to move away to university next year, all three intend to keep theatre in their lives after graduation, with two of them planning to study theatre at the postsecondary level.)
But first, they have to open the world premiere of a new musical, a rare challenge for actors of such a young age. But they’re not feeling the pressure – they’re just happy to be onstage with their pals.
“The theatre kids here are really, really tight-knit,” van Zijl said. “It’s been such a blessing to do our senior performance with literally my best friends.”