STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

They were dismissed with a rhyme: "Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived."

Six words. Six women.

Centuries of complex lives reduced to how they exited their marriage to a king who treated wives like chapters in a book he kept rewriting.

Now 11 young performers, ages 14 to 20, are reclaiming those stories in St. Thomas Playhouse's Summer Theatre Project production of "SIX: Teen Edition."

The energetic pop musical opens at 7 p.m. tonight--Tuesday, June 16--at the Sun Valley Community School Theatre. Shows run through Friday, June 19, with tickets available at https://ci.ovationtix.com/35974/production/1277772.

The Tony Award-winning pop musical, which won 26 awards including the 2022 Tony for Best Original Score, frames Henry VIII's six queens as a girl group competing for the title of who had it worst.

Each queen gets her own solo number, inspired by such pop divas as Beyoncé, Adele and Ariana Grande, transforming historic heartbreak into a celebration of 21st-century girl power.

But director Freddie Harris has pushed the cast to dig deeper than the pop anthems.

"SIX gives you just a glimpse of a character that has been shaped by a pop culture approach to history," Harris told the actors. "But Six leaves a lot out about the women you are portraying. As a well-prepared actor, you need to know what the script leaves out, simplifies or gets wrong. And that's going to be a stretch, so we ALL need to look for places in the show to insert the history that's omitted. That might be in a gesture, or in the tone in which you say a line or two, or in the choreography."

The cast has spent rehearsals immersing themselves in the real women behind the crowns—and what they've found goes far beyond a nursery rhyme.

Catherine of Aragon, for instance, was not simply divorced. Born in 1485 to two of the most powerful monarchs in Europe, she was tutored by Renaissance scholars in Latin, scripture, history and classical literature, becoming one of the most learned women in Europe.

She arrived in England at 15 to marry Prince Arthur, who died five months later. She was held in England for seven years, largely abandoned by both courts, before Henry VIII chose to marry her in 1509.

Their marriage lasted 24 years—collectively, Henry's five other marriages spanned just 14 years. And historians say it was genuinely happy for much of that time. Catherine served as Queen Regent while Henry was at war in France and oversaw the English victory at the Battle of Flodden. She was not passive. She was politically formidable.

"Aragon was very Catholic, came from Spain, and was very devout in her practice," said Sara Gorby. "The fact that Henry wanted to divorce her was a very big deal."

When Henry sought an annulment to marry Anne Boleyn, Catherine refused to concede, determined to protect her daughter Mary's rights. Her resistance triggered the English Reformation and Henry's break from the Roman Catholic Church. One woman's refusal to be quietly discarded changed the course of Western history.

Anne Boleyn was not simply beheaded, the actors learned. Educated at the French court, she was politically astute and a committed Protestant reformer. She refused to become Henry's mistress and held out for marriage—a refusal that drove his six-year campaign for an annulment from Catherine.

After giving birth to the future Elizabeth I, one of the most celebrated monarchs in English history, she suffered multiple miscarriages. Her final pregnancy in 1536 resulted in a stillborn boy. Within months, she was arrested on charges of adultery—charges modern historians regard as fabricated—and beheaded.

Jane Seymour did not simply die. Her appeal to Henry was partly her contrast to Anne—that she was quiet and seemingly submissive. In 1537, she gave birth to the future Edward VI, the male heir Henry had been desperate for. But she died 12 days later of childbed fever, a common post-birth infection.

She made an impact in her 35 years, however, having advocated for her stepdaughters Mary and Elizabeth and speaking out against the closure of England's religious houses, even after Henry warned her that his last queen had died in consequence of meddling too much in state affairs.

Anna of Cleves was not simply divorced. Her marriage, engineered by Thomas Cromwell to forge a Protestant alliance, was based on a portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger. And Henry VIII complained that her in-person appearance did not match her portrait, but historians suggest that was because he was already interested in the teenage Katherine Howard. Though the marriage lasted six month, Anna shrewedly agreed to an annulment, in which she lived out her days as a wealthy, independent woman at court, outliving Henry and all the rest of his wives by a decade.

Katherine Howard was not simply beheaded. She may have been as young as 17 when she was executed on charges of treasonous adultery for "premarital affairs" that were, in large part, the result of being exploited as a child by adult men.

The night before her execution, she reportedly asked to be allowed to practice placing her head on the block so she would do it correctly.

Catherine Parr did not simply "survive" by luck. She survived through extraordinary intelligence and political skill.

Fluent in French, Italian, Latin and Spanish, she was the first woman to publish a book under her own name in England. A committed Protestant reformer and serious theologian, she talked Henry out of having her arrested for heresy when the warrant was already drawn up. After Henry died in 1547, she married Thomas Seymour, her original love, and died the following year of childbed fever after the birth of her daughter.

"You just have these really dynamic characters," said Gorby. "Some who are very strategic and politically savvy. Once Henry was hopping from wife to wife, they started to figure out what they needed to do—or what they were willing to do—to survive Henry."

The production is double-cast, with the mentor cast dubbed “the Crowns” and the high school cast, “the Tiaras.” When performers aren't playing queens, they serve as ensemble members on stage, meaning they're in every show—it's just a matter of whether they're wearing the crown that night.

Aspen Galbraith, Makena Seitz, Vitoria Shane, Niko Smith, Dylan Darley-Emerson and Ali LaChance perform Tuesday and Thursday. Ida Belle Gorby, Zephyr Stream, Lizzie Loving, Elyse Duffield, Dylan Darley-Emerson and Avery Berkey take the stage Wednesday and Friday.

Ida Belle Gorby said learning two tracks—playing a queen on some nights and ensemble on others—has been both challenging and rewarding.

"It's been really fun to learn two tracks and kind of get a taste for that, because that's not usually something that we do," she said.

The creative team includes choreographer Sabina Barini and music director Alyssa Joy Claffey, who have joined Harris in pushing the young performers to find moments where the real history can emerge through a gesture, a line reading, or a step in the choreography.

"SIX" was born when Cambridge University student Toby Marlow found his mind wandering during a comparative poetry class in fall 2016 and began scribbling: "Henry VIII's wives → like a girl group," according to Smithsonian Magazine. He brought the idea to classmate Lucy Moss, and together they crafted a Tudor-themed pop musical that premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2017 before landing on London's West End and opening on Broadway at the Lena Horne Theatre in late 2021.

"What we were interested in doing was reframing the way that women have been perceived in history and telling their side of the story," Moss told Smithsonian Magazine.

The show makes no claim to 100 percent historical accuracy. What it does, brilliantly, is move beyond those reductive one-word summaries to present its subjects as fully realized individuals. And for 11 young performers in the Wood River Valley, the lessons run deeper than the music.

"I think for young women to play these roles is very empowering," Gorby said. "It teaches us lessons, cautionary tales. We want to evolve and be better than this."

Six women. Six stories. Finally told on their own terms—by a new generation determined to listen.