At 7:30, on Jan. 26-27, 2024, freshman and sophomore students took the stage in their production of “Honk,” a musical about the ugly duckling.

The show follows Ugly, played by freshman Michael Bowman, as he encounters bullies while learning to accept himself. 

Bowman, who has been doing theater since third grade, said that Ugly “kind of gets picked on his whole entire childhood. He gets lost from his family and on the way he goes through lots of trouble to try and find his mom again. He meets a bunch of people along the way and eventually he learns that being different is ok.”

Starting out on the farm, Ugly emerges from his egg a little later than his four perfect duck siblings and almost immediately is faced with bullying from his siblings, father and fellow farm animals. The only person that stands by his side is his mother Ida, played by sophomore Eva Thomas. 

“She loves her son even though everybody else hates him,” Thomas said. “She is the true defender of him, and a very powerful mom.”

However, on the other side showcases Sophomore John Zidek who plays the Cat, a crafty and villainous character whose primary focus is to make Ugly into a meal. 

“The most important part that I have faced would probably be figuring out the different facial expressions that I could make with the cat,” Zidek, who earlier this year played the Man in Chair during the school’s production of “The Drowsy Chaperone” and has been doing theater since 2021, said. “I feel like he’s all over the place so we can pretty much be doing anything and get away with it. But I wanted to find those perfect facial expressions.”

Compared to other Freshmen/Sophomore plays, this year Mr. Thomas made the decision to allow for the performance of the production to be seen by several elementary schools in the Libertyville area. The show was played from Jan. 29th to Feb. 2nd, and students were able to take the day off of school to share the talents they grew over the past couple of months.