A local high school is bringing a piece of Broadway to North Texas... literally. Theater students at The Colony High School now have the entire set from the Broadway production of “Bonnie and Clyde.” A Dallas connection and a warehouse auction helped make it happen.
“Building a set takes a lot of work and time,” said Fox Elrod, a senior The Colony High School. “And you have to be super dedicated in doing it."
Dedicated is one word which describes theater kids at the school perfectly. They are spending the last few days of January rehearsing for a major production which runs in February. “Bonnie and Clyde” – the Broadway musical, rooted in Texas.
“They met in west Dallas,” said theater director Ronda Craig, of the outlaw couple of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, whose story of crime and murder in the 1930’s has been told in cinema and on stage. “Everyone seems to have a connection."
A musical adaption of that story had a Broadway run in 2011. Dallas Summer Musicals helped produce it. Last fall, the outfit announced it was auctioning off the original set from the Broadway show, which had been in storage at a Dallas warehouse. That auction caught the attention of Dwayne Craig, who with his wife, Ronda, directs The Colony High School theater program. For the price of $10,000, they placed the winning bid.
“So what The Colony is getting, is about 90 percent of a Broadway show here,” he said.
That includes most of the stage setup, all of the props – including three cars, as well as the entire wardrobe. Craig says building such a set would cost even more.
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“For theater kids like us, that's a big deal,” said Brinkley Oropeza, one of two students to play the lead role of Bonnie.
“As a person that's not on Broadway, who's a high school student who does high school theater, you'd never dream that one day, I'll be in that guy's clothes or that girl's costumes,” said Elrod, who stars in the role of Clyde Barrow.
“The fact that all of this is here and we get to use it, it's magical,” said Ella Huestis, the other actress playing the female star. The lights of Broadway – shining on a stage in North Texas.
“It's crazy,” said Oropeza of the opportunity. “That's where we want to be. The fact that we can bring a little Broadway here to our home, it's awesome."
“Bonnie and Clyde" runs February 7-11 at The Theatre at The Colony.
