“Heathers: The Musical,” NCC’s fourth theatrical production this semester, is taking stage on Nov. 21. This student-directed production is highly anticipated as tickets have already begun to sell out.
Heathers is originally a movie from 1989 featuring Winona Ryder as the main character. This dark comedy follows Ryder’s character, Veronica Sawyer, as she becomes part of the “mean-girl” clique at her high school. As the story continues, she becomes interested in the new guy J.D. Chaos and death ensue making this movie one of a kind.
The musical version of this film began its off-Broadway run in 2014 and quickly became a cult classic. Though the show is so popular especially with younger audiences, it has never seen a Broadway stage.
Putting on this production of “Heathers: The Musical” at NCC has been quite a unique and amazing experience for the school. The production has had to work through a couple of challenges to get this show on the stage. Two of the biggest ones are heavy and dark themes and double-casted cast members.
Heavy themes and topics
As a dark comedy, Heathers handles a lot of heavy themes throughout. Such themes include sexual assault, gun violence, explosives, drugs, alcohol, death and suicide. Putting on a show with such heavy themes can be tricky, especially for the director.
Nathan Dittemore, director of “Heathers: The Musical” at NCC, said that he loves dark humor and uses it in productive ways. Even though he has no personal issue with the themes of the show, he acknowledges the need to address them in a healthy way.
“I think there is a power in art to make fun of those traumas, it’s almost healing. Putting the humor on it makes it easier to talk about,” said Nathan Dittemore, ‘25.
Putting the lighthearted humor in this show has been one of the many ways the production team has been able to handle the touchy topics with care.
The cast
The cast of “Heathers: The Musical” at NCC is a star-studded lineup. Every single member of this cast is exceptionally talented and ready to put on this show. This group of students contains freshmen through seniors and majors of all kinds.
While the cast shines as one of the best parts of this production of Heathers, the team faced a couple of challenges. One of those being double-cast students.
A handful of students were cast in multiple productions this semester, meaning they had to split their rehearsal time. Jake Keller ’26, was cast in both Broadway by the Decade and Heathers, which ran back-to-back.
“It was certainly a hard feat to acclimate into, but in the end I am proud of mine and my department’s ability to work even harder to produce two whole shows. I had to learn almost the entirety of Heathers in two and a half weeks, which was taxing but absolutely worth it,” said Jake Keller, ‘26.
Though this was a big challenge for the show, Nathan Dittemore, ’25, said that this was luckily the hardest part about the whole production.
“It was a very collaborative and day-by-day process, but I think we managed very well. There are great boons to being a small department and there are also great hindrances, and this was one of them,” said Nathan Dittemore, ‘25.
This challenge just goes to show what an amazing collection of students the theatre department has. They all work so exceptionally hard to put on amazing and out of this world productions. Their hard work is commendable.
Anticipation for the show
Since the announcement, audiences highly anticipated Heathers as the top theater production of the season. Tickets started selling rapidly as soon as they were available, sending the cast into a panic to get tickets for their friends and family.
With these large ticket sales, members of the production are even more excited to show off their hard work. Samantha Doyle, ’27, playing Veronica Sawyer, is beyond ready to share this show with audiences.
“I am most excited for people to simply finally see the whole show. The process has just been so wonderful and I cannot wait to share it with the audience,” said Samantha Doyle, ‘27.
When asked about what he hopes people take from this show, Dittemore talked about kindness. Bringing up the opening and closing number, both titled “Beautiful,” and how the meaning of the song changed from selfish to selfless by the end of the show.
“If there is one thing I hope this audience takes from this, it is that it is never too much to be kind to anyone,” said Nathan Dittemore, ‘25.
