As the nightmare images from Ukraine fill our televisions screens, the cast of “Catch Me If You Can” is taking the stage to help.
No, it’s not Leo DiCaprio or Tom Hanks or those from the early 2000s movie about the true story of famed check kiter Frank Abagnale Jr.
Rather, it’s the student cast at Ringgold High School in Georgia, who decided to add an encore performance of their musical version of “Catch Me If You Can” later this month with 85% of the proceeds going to the Save the Children’s Ukraine Relief Effort.
Talk about worthy of a standing ovation.
“What they see on the news and the pictures and video that have been sent out, it’s heartbreaking,” said Jane Ellis, a Ringgold High alum who is in her fifth year as an adviser/supervisor of the school’s performance arts crew. “They were asking about having an encore, and then someone said it could be a fundraiser and someone else said we could do it for the students in Ukraine.
“It was really a student-driven idea that has taken off.”
After the original run of four successful shows earlier this year, the cast, crew and faculty sponsors are ready to break another leg on Monday, March 28, at the Robin L. Christian Performing Arts Theater. The curtain will rise at 7 p.m. at the Ringgold High campus. Tickets are $10 and can be bought online at bit.ly/rhsshow.
“The first four were a majority full, but I think this will be the best crowd and performance yet,” said Ringgold senior Eli Talley, who plays Abagnale Jr., the man who posed as a doctor, an airline pilot, a lawyer, among others, to elude the FBI’s efforts to arrest him. “We’re living this dream and getting to do what we love, and to be able to help students like us in Ukraine makes it even more special.”
For Talley and his classmates – a collection of seniors Ellis called “outstanding” – it’s like getting another basketball game after the end of the state tournament.
For Talley, who has accepted scholarships to further his career in the performing arts at Savannah College of Art and Design and could be in line for some national high school performing awards this year, the final high school curtain will not be the end of the road.
But this extra chance to go out with his theater family is not lost on him.
“You always believe there are bigger things in store, but we have tried – and with the help from everyone, really – to make this as big as we possibly can,” Talley said. “This one is the last hoorah, but it’s not over.”
Nor is it simply a victory lap for what Ellis called the most ambitious show the arts students at Ringgold have done in her time there.
“We have 16 amazing seniors, and this is their swan song,” Ellis said. “And we talk a lot in this program about connecting – with the other students and the audience – but this gives them a chance to connect with students half a world away that they don’t even know.”
Bravo.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6273. Follow him on Twitter @jgreesontfp.
Jay Greeson