The De Soto High School musical this year is the iconic show Grease. Eighty-five students auditioned to be a part of the musical, and the final cast list was released on Sept. 2.

Choosing the cast is always a tough decision to make, especially at a competitive school like DHS.

“You know you’re going to break hearts, and it’s not what you want to do because you don’t ever want to hurt kids’ feelings,” said drama teacher and musical director Jason Hagg. “When you have the talent level that we have here at De Soto, it makes it kind of difficult.”

The cast has already started rehearsals, and they’ve been working hard on vocals and choreography.

“The choreography is harder, our vocals are sounding really good, and the kids are going through the music, so we’re sort of ahead of schedule,” Hagg said.

A new spin on the musical this year is a split chorus. Due to a large amount of girls in the show, it’s difficult to fit everyone on the stage at once. The chorus is going to be split with 20 students in each half. Each of those students gets two show nights instead of every student in every show.

“Our kids actually get to be seen more on stage, and they actually get to participate more,” Hagg said.

Rizzo’s pregnancy scare that happened in the Grease movie will not be a part in the musical. Hagg decided to use the school version of the musical which doesn’t include that situation.

    “You want to make sure that the parents are happy and the community is happy, so we played that safe,” Hagg said.

The student that plays Rizzo in the musical, Keirstyn Mascareno, thinks it would’ve been a good idea to keep that part in the musical.

“It’s understandable, but part of me wishes I could sing that song (There Are Worse Things I Could Do) because it shows a different side of Rizzo that you don’t get to see in this musical as much,” Mascareno said.

Everyone involved has been working incredibly hard to portray the popular musical.

“It’s really fun to play an iconic character that everyone knows,” Mascareno said. “I’m really excited to start running it because it’s such a fun show.”