It wasn’t a typical senior recital, one where a student performs various snippets of their theatre career one after another without any overarching story behind them. Kyra Helmuth and Em Marner’s senior recital, held Saturday, May 1 at Mid-Prairie High School, was more like a musical itself. 

The scene was set in the future in Kyra and Em’s New York City apartment as the girls tried to find musical numbers and monologues to audition with. Each piece flowed seamlessly into the next with transitions written in between to connect them.

Mid-Prairie Choir Director Collette McClellen told Kyra and Em that no one has even done a senior recital quite like it.

Act I opened with Em performing “I Want to Break Free” from the girls’ freshman-year musical, “We Will Rock You,” followed by Kyra and Em performing “I Want It Now” from their sophomore year musical, “Willy Wonka”.

Em and Kyra danced, sang, and acted their way through a repertoire of selections from their performing arts career at Mid-Prairie, including selections of musicals, group speech and individual speech events.

For Em, the highlight of the show was actually her performance of “Somebody to Love” from “We Will Rock You,” when she forgot some of the lyrics and had to improvise.

“That’s the good thing about being good at improv because I could just improv that off,” Em said. “I talked to some people afterwards an they didn’t even realize I had forgotten the words.”

Ironically, later in Act II, when Em was joined by Magnolia Graber and Terra Richardson to form the Transcondimentals improv group, they drew the topic “Singing a song you don’t know the words to.” The three performers improved their way through a scene that had the whole audience laughing.

After graduation, Kyra plans to move to New York City, where she is interested in attending a performing arts conservatory called The Growing Studio. Em plans to attend Kirkwood for a year then transfer out of state, possibly out of the country, to study biology.

“Being in speech and drama, you learn a lot of social skills and it’s important to have those skills when it comes to the workplace,” Em said. “Biology is a continuous study and you have to be good at communicating with others. I think that’s a skill you learn from performing arts.”

Kyra broke the Mid-Prairie record for more all-state nominations during her speech career, with 9 nominations over her four years.

“I feel like I’ve had my eye on [the record] since sophomore year, when I really got into speech, and I was really determined,” Kyra said. “I couldn’t have done it without the people I trust, like Em, and the coaches who have helped tremendously.”

From an outside perspective, when it comes to all-state time we always think, ‘I don’t think I’m going to make it,’ and all of us are just like, ‘Yes you are.’ It’s Kyra and she’s amazing, we all knew she’d get there and reach that goal. I don’t think it was surprising for any of us, except Kyra herself.”

The senior recital ended with Kyra and Em performing “Anchor” from their freshman year musical, “Pops & Pie”. The pair held hands and sang, looking right at each other.

“In the future, I know that maybe I’ll be in Europe and you’ll be in New York, but you’ll always be my anchor,” Em said to Kyra. “Maybe it won’t be like a constant phone call, but knowing that we’re always supporting each other and have always supported each other — it’s enough to know that you’ll always be my friend.”