They’re a school of fish!
About 30 middleschoolers from the Fillmore Academy Drama Club transported the packed crowd to the underwater kingdom of Atlantica during their stellar performance of The Little Mermaid Jr. at PS 207 on March 16. The pint-sized actors and actresses deserved the thunderous applause they received, said director Kimberly Simek.
“I was beyond proud of the students, they had put in so much hard work and so much effort, and the final product was so well received by the audience, which made the process even more gratifying,” she said. “They did fantastic.”
The Marine Park middle school’s sixth-through-eighth-graders put on two shows each year, and this year’s chosen play was the shortened children’s version of the animated musical fantasy film, which follows the story of Ariel, a sixteen-year-old mermaid princess, who wants to walk on two feet like a human.
The full-house audience even sang along with many of the songs, but the two that had the crowd singing the loudest were “Under the Sea” and “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” said Simek.
“The audience went crazy with ‘Under the Sea,’” she said. “We had these fish flying in the audience and stuff, and some of the kids were dancing in the aisle with jellyfish umbrellas, and the song overall was just so much fun, that’s the one everybody would be talking about afterwards.”
Assistant principal Noreen Alvarez brought along her 3-year-old daughter, who was mesmerized by the characters, she said.
“I thought it was fabulous, the children did a fantastic job, they worked really hard and you could tell it really came through in the performance,” said Alvarez. “My 3-year-old daughter, she was amazed, and she wanted to go see Ariel and see Ursula, they really did a fantastic job.”
