Mount Vernon’s First-Ever Dual Language All-School Musical Production

Disney’s Aladdin Dual Language Edition features the Academy Award-winning score from Disney’s animated classic, with lyrics in both Spanish and English. This bilingual adaptation, which got its start at Houston’s Theatre Under the Stars, has been a smash hit in schools across the country.
At Mount Vernon, Theater Director Clark Taylor transformed our Black Box Theatre into the Arabian city of Agrabah, where a cast of 61 students, spanning kindergarten through grade 12, performed (and sang!) in both Spanish and English. The nine-show, sold-out run carried many meaningful messages for the performers as well as their audience.
To bring Mount Vernon to closer to our community, one performance was specifically reserved for Los Niños Primero, a year-round educational program serving Latino Preschoolers and their families in Sandy Springs.
Senior Grace McCarthy who played Jafar and has also traveled to Spain on an exchange program, and shares, “As I work on my Spanish, I realize that it’s not so much about us connecting with others, but that we are trying to showcase a storyline of people not being able to communicate with each other. It shares a message that I would not have seen in the regular Aladdin — there’s more to this story than you might think.“
Our story began centuries ago, when the royalty of Agrabah spoke one language and the citizens another. Communication is impossible without translation… which is controlled by the evil vizier, Jafar. When the rebellious princess, Jazmin, and a delinquent street rat, Aladdin, meet in the marketplace, they find something special in one another. Together, they work to transcend the barriers between them and, with a little magic, help create a better future for themselves and for Agrabah.