Dinner and a show: Upper Cape students put on holiday themed dinner theater

For the second year in a row, drama students at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School are putting on a holiday themed dinner theater performance as the school's drama club performs "It's a Wonderful Life: A live radio play."

The dinner theater performance will take place at Upper Cape Dec. 13 at 7 p.m., Dec. 14 at 7 p.m. and Dec. 15 at 4 p.m.

Tickets are $50 a person and dinner includes options for prime rib, roasted chicken or mushroom risotto prepared and served by students from the Upper Cape culinary program.

Robert Genereau, an English teacher and Drama Club advisor at Upper Cape said he wants to see the dinner theater performance become a holiday tradition that promotes collaboration of students from different fields of work at Upper Cape.

"I had this vision of the ghost of Christmas present leading Scrooge through the tables of the restaurant and I had the idea of doing a Christmas carol as a dinner theater," said Genereau.

For the performance this year, Genereau said they are doing a "radio show" version of "It's a Wonderful Life" so the performance will be put on entirely through voice acting, music and sound effects.

"The set is a 1940s radio station and all of the students are voice actors," said Genereau. "They are reading from the script and changing their voices while playing different parts in the script. For the audience it is going to be kind of like an inside look to what an old time radio drama would look like."

Genereau said because the drama club is doing a radio show version, this presents a "unique challenge" for the students.

"They're used to normally memorizing their lines for a character but this time they get the script but we really have to stress we don't want it to sound like it's the first time they've looked at the script," said Genereau.

He added many students are voicing several different characters and they "are concocting their own unique voices for each character and in the past, they've been able to use their physicality as part of their acting but here, they are finding a whole new acting challenge with voice acting."

Blake Gagne, 16, of Onset started his acting career as a freshman at Upper Cape during last year's dinner theater performance and after securing a "major role" in a musical, he explained he found something he was passionate about and has been a part of almost every show the drama club has put on since.

Gagne is the announcer in the upcoming dinner theater and he said his biggest challenge is doing many voices for many different characters.

"Each day I'll pick one character and I will work on that character and I'll figure out the character's story and give them an accent or voice I think they would have," said Gagne.

During his preparation, Gagne said one of the most important parts is "getting into the head of the character."

"You have to figure out what your character's story is and I like to look through the lines for each character and I find a backstory for each character that I like," said Gagne.

Since joining, Gagne said he enjoys performing and being on stage but the people he has been able to surround himself with is a large reason why he keeps coming back.

"We're always supportive of each other and you get along with everyone and end up having a great time," said Gagne.