Collège Béliveau students compose bilingual musical

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This article was published 05/05/2025 (522 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s newest high school musical is an original comédie created by two teens who spent their summer break brainstorming a bilingual brouhaha.

Grade 12 students Avery Guyot and Madison Nelson debuted Sans Indices, which translates to “not a clue” — a nod to their murder-mystery — this spring.

“Because that’s what most of the characters are, (clueless). They have no idea what they’re doing,” said Avery, one of the 17-year-old playwrights, who played a chief investigator with shoddy moral compass.

Chaos ensues when the wealthy host of a retirement party is assassinated at a mansion-turned-crime-scene where much of the plot takes place.

Friends and family members in attendance, each of whom were written in the likeness of characters in the game of Clue (Blanche, Violet, Plume, Green, Ruby and Colonel Dijon), become suspects.

Despite feuding lead detectives — who, at one point, compete in a dance battle — and an incompetent forensics team, the case is solved in under 90 minutes.

The key piece of evidence? A half-eaten honey cruller.

Madison, 17, described the young creatives’ final product as “fun-filled brouhaha.”

The co-creator starred as Mrs. Green, a lovable gossip who calls into a talk show while under house arrest to give a live update of the investigation. “I love making people laugh,” she said.

Collège Béliveau has a long-standing tradition of mounting made-in-house performances using scripts that alternate between English and French.

This year, students sought to challenge themselves to come up with a storyline, write complementary songs and choreograph everything on their own.

Teacher-supervisors Mélanie Dubois and Zara Ramlal believe the production to be a first of its kind in the province.

Béliveau staff took the reins to facilitate and carry on the legacy of Michel Roy, a newly retired teacher and standup comedian who wrote numerous high school musicals. Roy left the immersion campus in Windsor Park in 2023.

Dubois said she occasionally fields questions from students about why they don’t adapt classics, such as Grease.

Throughout the 2024-2025 year, theatre programs elsewhere in Winnipeg have put on their own versions of Annie and The Addams Family, among other well-known titles.

“We’re staying true to the fact that we’re a French immersion school,” Dubois said, noting that Béliveau is an outlier in that the building is committed to casting bilingual characters every year.

She added that purchasing the rights to trademarked productions can be costly.

New York City-based Music Theatre International charges schools roughly $1,000 to buy a show kit for Broadway Junior productions.

Avery recalled the shock when, after one of their first shows, a senior viewer suggested she and Madison sell the rights to their Sans Indices script.

She credited the duo’s success to combining their strengths — her knack for creative writing and Madison’s natural talent under a spotlight on stage.

The cast and crew have been “heartened” by the positive feedback they’ve received about the comedy of errors during its inaugural five-show April 29-May 1 run, Madison said.

“Young writers, young actors — they can accomplish great things,” she said.

Both teens said the project, which was a year in the making and aired at Glenlawn Collegiate (Béliveau does not have a theatre), has improved their self-confidence and French-language skills.

Christina Peabody, president of the Manitoba Drama Educators’ Association, said she hopes the unique musical has a “domino effect.”

Peabody has spent her teaching career looking for different ways to leverage performance arts to help students practise their French language skills.

“(Drama) gives them an exciting outlet. It’s genuinely fun for them and even with the most stubborn students, in terms of not wanting to speak French, they dive head-first,” she said.

One of the themes of the professional association’s fall conference is exploring ways to help students take their creative ideas off the page.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca