SNOW HILL — The story of notorious 16th-century monarch Henry VIII will go from the page to the stage this weekend as Kids on Stage presents “Six.” The teen edition of the award-winning musical takes a scandalous chapter of England’s history and retells it as her stories.
“Six,” written by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, is a modern take on the lives of Henry’s six wives. The characters Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr, sometimes remembered with the tragic description “divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived,” tell their stories through song and dance.
“It’s a pop musical and it’s super fun and upbeat, but it’s also real life,” Director Parker Harris said. “It is a historical musical that has been brought into the modern age.”
“Six” is based on the Tony Award-winning hit that premiered in England in 2017 and made its way to America two years later. The teen version includes all the original songs, with some modifications in lines and lyrics to minimize suggestive language.
“We are one of the very first organizations to produce it in North Carolina,” Harris said of the show, which is back on Broadway following a hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic. “We don’t typically get to do shows you can now see on Broadway.
“When I sat down to talk with our team about what we wanted to do (this) year, this wasn’t available,” he said. “We wanted to do it because it’s a story about girl power and standing up for what you believe in and reclaiming your story. It’s all things that everyone needs to hear, especially our females. It’s six powerhouse female roles, and we have that. We have the cast for that.
“When it was announced that it was being released, I was like, ‘Cancel all your plans; this is what we’re doing.’”
This is not the first time that Harris, founder and artistic director of Kids on Stage, has managed to secure rights for an in-demand title. In 2023, the Greene County youth theater group became one of the first organizations outside of Nashville to perform “May We All,” a jukebox musical by Florida Georgia Line’s Brian Kelley.
Alyssa Jones, one of the stars of “May We All,” returns to the stage in “Six” as Anne Boleyn, the king’s second wife, who was beheaded for treason.
“She doesn’t care what she says,” Jones said of her character. “She doesn’t care if it hurts anybody’s feelings. I think a little part of me does want to be her in a way because I am definitely more timid.”
Still, Jones, who started with Kids on Stage in 2021, has grown to be fearless on stage, portraying roles in shows ranging from Disney musicals to “Hairspray.” A June graduate of South Central High School, she has been accepted into the musical theater program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Alisa Washington, a rising freshman at Lenoir County Early College high School, will portray Anna of Cleves, a role she has wanted since she saw “Six” at Durham Performing Arts Center last year.
“It just really worked out that I got my favorite queen,” Washington said of her character, Henry’s fourth wife. “Her personality is a lot like mine, the sassiness, the spunk.”
While the title characters in “Six” are inspired by King Henry’s half-dozen wives, they are modeled after modern-day celebrities.
“Every queen was inspired by a pop artist or multiple (artists), people like Britney Spears, Ariana Grande, Adele, Nicki Minaj, all of these people, all of these women our cast members are looking up to,” Harris said. “I think why I picked it was to allow them to understand they also can reclaim their story.”
Rounding out the cast of queens are Ava O’Neal as Jane Seymour, Nevaeh Terry as Catherine Parr, Samantha Davis as Catherine of Aragon and Stacie Hubbard as Katherine Howard. While the 16-member cast features mostly teen girls, four male actors are included in the ensemble.
“Six” is the seventh show for Matthew Swift since he joined Kids on Stage in 2022. But it is the first time the rising eighth-grader at Hope Middle School has not had a speaking role. “We’re just a part of the choreography to tell the story,” he said.
Damien Marks, a rising sophomore at Lenoir County Early College High School, has lost count of the number of Kids on Stage shows he has performed. He is glad to see some of his female co-stars have a chance to shine.
“We have so many women at KOS,” he said, “and sometimes for women it’s harder to get bigger roles in such a competitive field.”
Experienced young actors, ages 12 to 18, were hand-picked for their roles in “Six.” It is one of two shows that KOS will perform this summer. In July, a cast of about 50 students will perform “Willy Wonka Jr.,” which features a more kid-friendly script than the PG-13 rated “Six.”
Harris, who founded KOS in 2015 when he was 14, said that while he is a fan of Disney musicals, he felt the need to expand the organization’s offerings, especially for older teens. The group performed “Hairspray” in the fall of 2023.
“Children’s theaters don’t do ‘Hairspray,’” said Harris, who just completed his first year of teaching fifth-grade English-language arts at Greene County Intermediate School. “The conversations and their careful attention to that show showed me that teenagers, in particular, are a lot more in tune (to societal issues) than we think. Kids on Stage has always been very good about allowing our cast members to have these conversations and challenging our audiences to think deeper about what shows mean on stage.”
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