The award winning romantic comedy “Legally Blonde,” will become a local production for this year’s annual musical. Auditions were held during the second week of November.

This year’s musical will be directed by theater teacher Ken Gibson and choir teacher Bethany Houff.

“I’m excited to work with Mr. Gibson and for our students to work with Mr. Gibson. He has a wealth of experience directing and he is a creative and energetic director. I think the Harrisonburg community will embrace his talents and appreciate the gifts he brings,” Houff said.

For seniors such as Julia Inouye, musicals are nothing new. After auditioning for “Legally Blonde,” Inouye feels comfortable with her performance after auditioning for four years.

“I felt good about it. I wasn’t upset with how it went. I mean obviously after you do something, you feel like you can always do better,” Inouye said. “I felt prepared going into it, and I got a callback which was the goal. I feel pretty good about that. “

While Inouye has been through the auditioning process many times before, underclassmen such as freshmen Jordan Perez were hoping to simply get a role and then go from there.

“Of course lead roles are fun but honestly the musical, for me, is more about the experience and getting an ensemble role is fine for me. I just hope to get in as a freshmen; that’s all I really want. Maybe later on I’ll hope for a lead, but right now I just want to get in,” Perez said.

To audition, students performed a one minute monologue and sang a section of a piece from the production. Those who received a dance callback had to attend another dance audition the following week. While auditions can come off as stressful for students, Houff also feels lots of stress going into auditions.

“Auditions are always stressful. It is difficult to know that there will be students who are disappointed, either because they are not accepted to the show or because they are not assigned the role they were dreaming of,” Houff said. “I always encourage students to keep working hard on their singing, acting, and dancing skills and to keep auditioning year after year.”

Directors may stress about assigning roles to the best of their ability, but students tend to overthink and stress over how they’re making a first impression, managing the musical with school and controlling the anticipation of having to audition.

“The most stressful part for me is putting your best foot forward and presenting the best version of yourself because you only have five minutes to do your best to be considered for the roles that you want to get,” Inouye said.

Both this year’s cast and the directors have high hopes for how the musical will turn out this year. Houff is excited about what “Legally Blonde” will bring to Harrisonburg this year.

“This is something completely different than what we’ve done in the past few years. We love how many roles are available to showcase our students’ talents. There are so many characters who will be featured singing, dancing and acting in this show. Audiences will love this high energy, funny, entertaining musical,” Houff said.