By Colleen Flanagan, Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows News
Drama teachers across North America have been waiting more than 20 years to get their hands on the Broadway musical Mamma Mia!.
Including Cynthia Lacroix, drama teacher at Garibaldi secondary.
“As long as it was playing on Broadway, no one in North America basically got to do it,” explained Lacroix.
Lacroix, who for the past decade has been a member of the Broadway Teachers Workshop in New York City where drama teachers from around the world travel receive once-in-a-lifetime classes with Broadway directors and creators, heard that the show was coming but The Arts Club had sealed the rights.
Then as she was preparing to put on the Disney musical Aladdin she thought she would ask again if she could put on the show. She was told she would have to wait until November 2019.
Lacroix was disappointed. She does not like to put on shows that she has already done in the past.
“If I can’t get a show, I don’t want to work,” said the drama teacher.
“Then by some miracle, a week later, I got the rights to 2018. Don’t know how. Didn’t ask any questions. I just begged my principal to pay the full rights immediately so that nothing could be altered, and then away we went,” she said.
Mamma Mia! is the story about a bride-to-be who is searching for her real father. She secretly invites three men from her mother’s past who are potential candidates. The musical based on the songs of the 1970’s Swedish pop group ABBA.