ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

The City of Liberal will be hosting its first Holiday Extravaganza in December, and in order for such an event to be truly successful, there must be entertainment.

Auditions to be part of the Extravaganza’s entertainment will be from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7 in the dance studio at the Liberal Recreation Center at 950 S. Grant Ave. Coordinator Nikki Frydendall said the Extravaganza is a great opportunity for the community.

“It would be a great chance for people to get to see what you can do and to get involved in the community. And then besides you showing everybody what you can do, you're going to get to see what other people in the community are able to do that you may not even have known about,” Frydendall said. “I can’t tell you how many times we would have someone come in and do a tryout of some kind, and I'd be thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn't even know that person could sing!’ or ‘I didn’t know that person was so talented at the piano,’ or something like that. Being involved in things in the community is wonderful, and it is important to do things like that and help your community grow. I hope we can get the arts really moving forward in lots of different areas. It used to be there would be something about every three or four months that local kids and the adults could be involved in, and I would like to see us get back to that, at least maybe two big events a year that people are looking forward to.”

Even though this year will be the inaugural event, Frydendall said she hopes for a large turnout at the auditions.

“I am hoping we get at least 25 or 30 people to be interested and try out, and anyone can audition, whether you’re an infant or 100 years old. Anybody can come and try out, and then we'll pick based on different factors like their talent, whether the act will be fun for the audience to watch, and overall entertainment value,” Frydendall said. “Your act can be anything – it can be a little Christmas skit, or a piano or vocal or  instrumental solo, and we would love to see groups and individuals. We hope to see a little of everything, that would make the show so amazing for the people who come out.”

The actual Holiday Extravaganza will take place Sunday, Dec. 13 in Maskus Auditorium at Liberal High School, and Frydendall said the idea for the event came up through multiple conversations with her daughter, City Manager Scarlette Diseker.

“Scarlett and I had kind of talked about how would be neat to kind of get some more activities going around Christmas, especially any type of arts for the community. We went to see the holiday extravaganza Music Theater of Wichita put on last year, and all of a sudden we both had little light bulb moment,” Frydendall said. “Ultimately, we decided, since we have such great Christmas decorations for our recital the Farrar family makes for us every year, and since we hate to take them down after just two hours, we could incorporate our recital with something big and special. We also thought it would be neat to incorporate people from the surrounding area kind of like the Pancake Day Talent Show used to. What we're going to do is we're going to take 12 of our dancers and have them in the show, and then we're going to pick 12 more acts from the auditions to go in. We've already had some people show interest in things, and that's pretty awesome. We know Renae Beasley some of her students from Hugoton are going to come and try out, and I've heard possibly some middle school ensembles of some kind are thinking about getting something together. I think that it's hopefully going to go over very well and give people the opportunity to show their talents, because there are a lot of people in the area who have different things they can do. It's fun to get to see them do that, and we haven't had that opportunity lately with no Pancake Day Talent Show or anything like that, so I think this will maybe get that type of thing going again.”

Even though the Extravaganza is still a little way off, Frydendall said she is excited to see what happens that day, and she will definitely be hyping everything up.

“I just am excited to see another event in Liberal, not just for Christmas, but a big event people look forward to that could become an annual event,” Frydendall said. “What we're hoping to do is to make it something people look forward to just like some of the events we used to have in the past, and they think ‘Oh, we want to make sure we're in town that day,’ so they can go and see it. We really want to get the community excited about new things going on. We’re sharing the flyer on several Facebook pages and other social media, and we've got flyers that are fixing to go up all over town to encourage people to audition. I think there will probably also be some radio spots and things like that to let everybody in the area know that we're looking for all of these talented people.”

Overall, Frydendall said, the Extravaganza should be a great time for everyone.

“I think anytime people can get involved with the community, it's an awesome thing, and it’s great to also be able to showcase people's talents because we haven't gotten to do that in a while,” Frydendall said. “We hope we have a great turnout, and I think we'll have a great crowd that day when the actual show goes on. I'm looking for forward to all of it.”