PHS sets Madrigal Dinner

Perryville students are set to get medieval.
The Old Senior High gymnasium will be transformed into a medieval dining hall and give attendees the experience of a palace feast on Dec. 6-7. The doors open at 6 p.m., and the dinner begins at 7 p.m. both nights.
Tickets are still available for the show and cost $20. The deadline for buying tickets is Dec. 3.
“I want students and the audience to experience the culture like it was in the Renaissance era,” said Perryville choir director Abraham Leach. “One of the most important things about the Madrigal Dinner is that it’s a good, clean family fun and it’s a way to get people to be encouraged to participate in music.”
But the Madrigal Dinner isn’t anything like the regular play or performance that the music department puts on each year. The nearly two-hour event is a catered meal with Renaissance-era booths, and even stocks that the audience can pay to have a family member put in for a length of time. There will also be a boar’s head, paraded into the room, as per tradition as well.
But the main event is a play each year, and this time around it will be a slightly different version of the Shakespeare classic Romeo and Juliet.

“This version of the story will have sort of a Monty Python look to it,” Leach said. “I tried to pick it because it’s a story that everyone in the audience is at least familiar with and we added a twist to it.”
The dinner is one of the only times through the course of the school year that the elementary, middle, and high school choirs all get together and perform, so to hear Leach describe it, the event is a big one.
“It’s a tradition that has been going on for almost 30 years,” Leach said. “It’s a way for the elementary students to interact with the high school students and vice-versa, where as they usually wouldn’t really have that kind of opportunity.”
Leach noted that the students have been hard at work for the past month getting ready for the major event.
“We have been working on this for about the last six weeks, rehearsing and getting everthing together,” Leach said. “As you can imagine, there are a lot of moving parts to a two-hour performance. We just want to make sure that it’s perfect and that it’s something the audience will enjoy.”