It’s just around the corner—the musical Grease opens this Thursday night and it is set up to be quite the experience. For those familiar with the show, one of the major plot points is Kenickie’s car, known as “Greased Lightning”.

This car is key to a true performance of Grease no matter where it is—on Broadway or on a high school stage. Obtaining such a prop seems a difficult feat, and according to Mrs. Rippel, acting teacher and fine arts chair, “Greased Lightning” was one of the hardest to get items on the list.

“Every show has kind of a big item that we work on from the very first day. Last fall it was making it rain on stage,” she said, referring to last year’s production of George Washington Slept Here in which pipes hooked to a central pool were used to create a rain effect, “but for Grease it was the car.”

Mrs. Rippel stated that they were originally just going to get a tricked out golf cart. However, the father of tech director Mr. Andy Payne has a client who collected old cars. After checking out the lot, they managed to find the quite the impressive prop: a full-fledged junker spiffed up and ready to roll.

Another interesting strategy used in producing the play is “suggested realism”, which, according to Mrs. Rippel, is the idea of keeping a single main “set” and only adding a few things to show a scene change—like adding a street lamp to show that the characters are outside.

One major issue that may jump out to the audience stems from the car—they only have one car, but in the musical it goes through a complete transformation from hunk-a-junk to proper vehicle. Most Broadway level productions use two entirely different cars throughout the musical.

“It’s complicated when you don’t have a big Broadway budget,” said Mrs. Rippel, “because we can’t have two cars.” This issue would seem to make using the car unfeasible, however, according to Mrs. Rippel, they have a very “tricky, creative way to make it work” which she refused to spoil.

Want to find out what sort of tricks are going to be used? Get some tickets and reserve some seats so that you can catch Grease, this Thursday through Sunday, starting at 7:30 PM every night—bring your friends and family, Go Together, and get All Choked Up.