Are you ready to roar? Albert Lea High School gears up for annual talent showcase

Published 5:50 am Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Tigers Roar returns to the high school at 7 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday. This year’s theme is “Game On,” and emcees will include games in all their skits between performances, whether board games, video games or game shows.

This year’s show will include a bad magic act, according to Diane Heaney, vocal music teacher at the high school, who leads the show.

“It’s just kind of a dumb skit on a bad magician,” she said. “Hopefully it offers a little comic relief.”

Email newsletter signup

There will also be poem recitals with original artwork and ballet dances from a new ballet club.

“They’ve only been dancing for six months,” she said.

She wanted those who attended to know all student work was their own ideas, not her idea or script. And that, she said, was why the program was different every year, and she compared it to a fruit basket.

Above all, she wants students to be proud of their talents, creativity and proud to be a performer.

Heaney has been in charge of Tigers Roar for half of her career at the district, where she started at the old high school before taking a break and returning to lead the show in 2014.

Money raised will be used toward fine arts programs, including the replacement of auditorium equipment when needed.

Senior Lara Westrum will perform in the show choir, something she’s done since 10th grade.

She wanted to enjoy her last time on stage and remember it.

Isabella Brown, a junior at the school, is singing “Rainbow” by Kacey Musgraves.

“The song holds a lot of meaning with me, not just me but it has a lot of family meaning to it,” she said.

Senior Erika Saindon is playing the alto saxophone in the first act, and will read “Butterflies,” a poem by Maia Mayor, in the second act.

Tickets will be available at the door starting at 6:15 p.m. all nights. They’re also available online through the high school’s activities webpage.

This will be Heaney’s last time directing at the high school.

Looking back, she said she was proud of things her students have done in the past as well as this year. She did not know who would be taking over, or if the program would continue in the future.

Heaney also thanked performers past and present.

“Thank you for being brave and putting yourself out there and for sharing your talent and your time,” she said. “Hopefully it was worth it.”

Westrum said she was “beyond grateful” for the work Heaney put in to ensuring her students were the best they could be.

“She’s honestly been one of the biggest inspirations in my music and even my acting part of my life,” Brown said. “She’s been a very big influence in what I’ve done.”

Tigers Roar has been a staple within the district for at least 80 years, and Heaney thought it started in the mid 1940s.

For Heaney, her most memorable moments include the first emcees she had and a single ladies skit involving boys in tights and leotards.