Students from St. Mary's finish their final dress rehearsal before 'We Will Rock You' opens on Wednesday. (paNow Staff/Nick Nielsen)

By Nick Nielsen

St. Mary's drama club returns to stage

VIDEO: Galileo and Scaramouche look to dethrone AI overlord Killer Queen in St. Mary’s drama performance

May 6, 2025 | 2:36 PM

The theatre group at St. Mary’s High School is almost ready to hit the stage for the first time in two years, taking over the EA Rawlinson Centre stage for four shows starting Wednesday, May 7, and the closing show on Saturday, May 10.

This year, the theatre group is going to performing the musical ‘We Will Rock You’, and according to director and drama teacher at St. Mary’s, Jason Van Otterloo, it’s a story that has a surprising amount of relevance in today’s day and age mixed in with the tunes of Queen.

“It is a futuristic sort of story that in a world where AI has taken over all of our creative input, which when this was written was so far fetched because it was written in 2003, yet here we are 2025 and AI is a fact of life for all of us now. So that’s the musical we’re doing and it uses Queen music all the way throughout the whole show as its storytelling device musically.”

The musical combines two big things together to tell it’s story, the music of Queen that helps move the story along to give adults something to relate to in the show, and the use of AI that kids are becoming more and more familiar with in their day to day lives. For Van Otterloo, seeing kids get excited about Queen’s music has been a rewarding experience.

“When they first get into it, they’re going, ‘I like the two Queen songs I know,’ because they all know Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock you, and then when we get further into it, they start doing things like, ‘oh, this is a Queen song?’and then they start going, ‘Oh man we love this music!’.”

Interprovincial Agreement

Saskatchewan, Ontario premiers sign MOU to remove trade barriers

9h ago

Reconnected

SaskTel services restored in most northern communities

11h ago

Emergency Alert

Immediate evacuation issued for Timber Bay

13h ago

On the flip side of that coin, the student cast has been getting familiar with using AI as a tool to help them in their lives already. Not only does the play revolve around AI potentially trying to take over the world in a dramatic sense, but it’s also opened up a conversation between students and teachers to help understand each other better on the uses of AI.

“AI is not foreign to them, they’re going to grow up with this, right, where those of us who are adults are going, ‘man AI? I’m not sure, I can see some pitfalls.’ A lot of these students are like ‘I’m going to use AI as soon as I graduate, this is going to be helpful to me.’ So, you know, watching it as sort of a cautionary tale it’s been really good for me as a teacher and for them as students to learn something from the show that they’re doing.”

This was actually the same play that was picked out for last year before job action got in the way of extra curricular activities and the play was cancelled. Luckily last year’s casting isn’t too different for this year’s play, just a few roles had to be shifted around, and now they’re ready to roll with things.

“We had six Grade 12s last year that had moved on and graduated, so this year we did do a little bit of shuffling of the dice. Most of the students stayed in the roles they had last year. There were a couple of people that had to shift just due to a new set of circumstances with who we had available, but for the most part we kept most of the kids in the same spots.”

You won’t see an appearance from Freddy Mercury or Brian May in this musical, but rather characters named after some of Queen’s most iconic songs and lyrics such as the AI villain of the show, the Killer Queen, her henchman named Khashoggi (after the song Khashoggi’s Ship), and the heroes Galileo and Scaramouche who will be leading the Rebels Without a Cause against Killer Queen’s regime.

“If they’re an adult at all, I go ‘do you like Queen music?’ ‘Cause if you like Queen music, you’re going to enjoy the show first and foremost because the music is so powerful and so awesome. And then the second part of it, just for me as a director, it is so uplifting to work with youth or teenagers in such a positive environment where you can basically let your hair down and rock out with some good music and a good story.”

Tickets are on sale now at the EA Rawlinson Centre with each show going at 7:30 on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.