GRAND FORKS) - Directors and cast members predict their audience will be "laughing one minute and crying the next" during a revival of a musical about the 1997 Red River flood.

Cast member Michaela Hill, who participated in the original run of "Keep The Faith," said the revival has helped her to understand the disaster that destroyed much of Grand Forks and neighboring East Grand Forks, Minn.

"The first time I was excited to be part of the show and perform with the big kids," said Hill, 18, a senior at Grand Forks Red River High School. "This time around, I really understand the passion."

The show is part of a four-day commemoration to mark the 10th anniversary of the flood, which forced the evacuation of about 60,000 people and caused nearly $2 billion in damage. In the midst of cleanup in the spring of 1997, leaders of the annual summer performing arts series decided to write an original show about heartache and hope.

Not all the youngsters liked the idea. Mike Nowacki, an original cast member who's now a University of North Dakota student, said some of the students "were downright angry" when "Hello Dolly" was scrapped in favor of the original musical.

"At the time, a lot of us didn't see the point," he said. "Only later would we realize that it became something larger than they had ever done before - and something larger than us."

Fearing empty seats, the group scheduled only three performances. When the show wrapped up a year later, it had played 10 times in front of 23,000 people, said Dean Opp, the administrative director of the performing arts series.

Opp, who wrote and directed the original show along with Angie Black, Brad Sherwood, Connie Sherwood and Mike Weber, said the emotions of the disaster came back when they watched the original musical on tape.

"We were taking notes and planning about what we were going to do for the revival," Opp said. "Then we got to the part with the sirens, the fire, and the dike breaking. We kind of quit taking notes.

"It hit us harder that we ever thought it could."

The 2007 version touts recovery, including a new song by Weber entitled "River of Dreams." One song has been dropped and several others have been edited to focus on the recollections of current cast members.

Opp said the leading cast members in the original musical were mostly high school students who added their own stories of loss. The current cast members, who were elementary school age and younger during the flood, are telling stories of isolation.

"Their parents evacuated them, took them out of town and left them while they went back and cleaned up," Opp said. "Their friends weren't around. They didn't even know what was going on."

Hill went to stay with her mother's relatives in Rocklake, northwest of Grand Forks in Towner County. Nowacki found refuge with relatives of his sister's boyfriend in Niagara, about 40 miles west.

"It seemed like everyone wound up with friends of friends or friends of relatives out in the country," Nowacki said.

About 40 high school age students from both cities have leading roles in the revival, which is scheduled for performances on today and Friday. Younger students make up a chorus of about 100 singers for the finales of the first and second acts. The story includes several multimedia clips and is told primarily through the voices of actors, including Hill, who play radio broadcasters.

"I think it's very powerful," Hill said.

Cast member Mia Klaus, a sophomore at Grand Forks Central, said the mood swings in the musical paint an accurate picture of the disaster.

"I've heard the stories, read the books and looked at the pictures," she said. "This show gives everything a whole new meaning. There are some lighter moments in the show, mixed in with a lot of the cold realities."

Brad Sherwood said the flood is "a pretty nasty wound" and he has heard that many people who lived through it "don't want to see this or hear this." For others, it will be group therapy, he said.

"They will be laughing one minute and crying the next," he said.