Nature Coast Tech stages dark, ambitious Ride the Cyclone production

Nature Coast Technical High School took on one of the darkest and most ambitious shows in local school theater with Ride the Cyclone: The Musical High School Edition, a choice that gave Hernando County a look at how far student performance can go when the material is bold enough to challenge them. The production ran April 23-26, 2026 at the Brooksville campus, 4057 California St., and it centered on six Canadian high school choral students killed in a roller coaster accident who are then judged by a mechanical fortune teller named Karnak.

The show was more than a campus performance. Mitchell Gonzalez directed it, and the students chose the play themselves, a decision that made the production feel less like an assignment and more like a statement about what Nature Coast’s arts program is willing to attempt. The school, which serves grades 9-12 and lists about 1,300 students, says students can move into pathways including Performing Arts and Digital Cinema, part of a broader mission to prepare them for college, technical school, the military or the workforce.

That mission showed up on stage in the way the musical connected performance to future careers. Jacob Marko, one of the students in the production, is already planning to make theater his profession and has been accepted to several drama schools with full scholarships. For Hernando County families watching the arts as a real academic and career track, that kind of trajectory makes the production feel larger than a spring show.

Ride the Cyclone itself carries the kind of resume that helps explain why it landed at a local high school. Concord Theatricals describes it as a darkly comic piece about six teens competing for a second chance at life, and official licensing materials say it premiered in Vancouver on March 11, 2009 before debuting off-Broadway in New York on November 20, 2016. Broadway Licensing made a high school edition available in 2023, opening the door for programs like Nature Coast’s to stage a show with a strong cult following and unusual emotional range.

Gonzalez brought his own local theater pedigree to the production. A June 2025 profile said he is a Nature Coast graduate who became hooked on theater after a college musical revue, later directed at Richey Suncoast Theatre and Stage West, and helped push the school theater department to sold-out shows after he arrived. The Hernando County Fine Arts Council has also said Nature Coast has received Arts in Education grants multiple times, including funding for its Digital Production Program and tripods in 2023, evidence that the program’s growth has been reinforced by community backing as well as student talent.