The North Lake Campus Theater Department brought a unique performance to the stage with “Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans: A Salsa Fairytale,” their first musical performance in more than 20 years.

The theater department has put on two shows a semester for three of the four past semesters. “Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans” was presented in the performance hall, April 29 to May 2.

“I have been here for over 20 years and I’ve never seen one [a musical] here. So, it hasn’t happened in my tenure here at North Lake,” said Dr. Sherry Boyd, director of “Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans.” “I’ve sung all of my life. I’ve been a vocal performer before I became an acting performer and I always liked the combination of acting and singing and I wanted to give students an opportunity to do this.”

The musical is a retelling of the classic story of “Cinderella,” with the twist being that Cinderella is a middle school girl from Puerto Rico who just moved to the mainland United States. Instead of evil stepsisters, she has a mean classmate Rosa, who, despite being Hispanic, rejects her culture and makes fun of Cinderella vehemently for leaning into it.

“I like to choose shows that fit the demographic of this school and I like the fact that it is didactic. That it tells stories. That it has lessons,” said Boyd. “I like that it was written by a playwright that is a minority playwright. I always feel like that is something that needs to be brought into the cannon.”

Throughout the roughly hour long runtime, Cinderella becomes more confident in herself and her culture. At the end of the musical, she stands up to Rosa and her bullying by telling her she is proud of her culture and that she would not be ashamed of it or hide it any longer. Rosa responds by acknowledging how badly she has treated Cinderella, apologizing for making fun of her culture and giving Cinderella her shoes.

This play deals with cultural whitewashing and the pressure to hide one’s culture to fit in, or, on the flip side, being reprimanded or made fun of for embracing one’s culture.

Preparing for a musical, while not entirely different from a regular play, does involve more group work as well as individual preparation, as the actors have to go to singing les-sons and dance rehearsals on top of the regular rehearsals.

“It’s been amazing and challenging,” said lead actress Nicolle Lopez, who plays Cinderella. “This is the first time that I’m combining acting, dancing and singing together.”

The play not only leans into Hispanic culture in Cinderella’s background, but also the language used in the play itself.

“Cinderella speaks Spanish, like 85% of her lines are in Spanish,” said Lopez. “Since I moved to the United States, I’ve been doing just plays and scenes or monologues in English, so I think I’m used to that, which is ironic and crazy because Spanish is my first language.”

The show is aimed at children and the main lesson of the play is empathy. The show is meant to teach children how to walk in another person’s shoes and think about what they may be struggling with that you may

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“It’s told in a way that, such a silly story has such a big teaching to it, which is empathy,” said Camilo “Milo” Ramos, assistant director and stage manager. “I feel like empathy is something that us, a society right now, we’re missing. What better art to teach empathy than theater?”

“Because you, as an actor, you are literally putting yourself in someone else’s struggles; yourself in their shoes, you go through their struggles. You feel their happiness, their sadness. I feel like, once us as human beings start being more empathetic, were going to be moving in a better direction because we can understand what the people around us can feel sometimes, that it’s not just us,” Ramos said.

The musical is a major landmark in the North Lake Theater Department, which has been slowly rebuilding itself since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020.

“It’s such a historical moment for this department that has given me so much. And it’s amazing to see what, after COVID, the department kind of declined a little bit. And now it’s starting to get back on its feet and having a musical done. It’s a big step for the depart-ment and I hope it only goes up from here,” Ramos said.