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Having a Ball: 'Cinderella' Hits the Stage at HS North

School's spring musical to have three shows on Friday, two on Saturday

Two dress rehearsals to go ... Stage Manager John Bennett calls up to the crew in the balcony via his wireless headset and lights begin to dart across the drawn curtain. Cue the cast. And, three, two, one ... Curtain up!

Starting tomorrow, Middletown High School North will present its spring musical production of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Cinderella, the classic tale of princely heroics and good versus evil, in two marathon sets.

On Friday, a morning performance will run for local elementary school students, while a special showing for senior citizens will take place in the afternoon; then the evening show will be performed for a general audience. The next day, Saturday, the first show, an afternoon production, will follow a special Princess Tea Party for younger audience members. The evening show is the final performance — closing night.

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The cast and crew, at this moment, can not worry about all that, though. Right now, they are trying to remember lines, hit marks, and be mindful that their stage microphones are “hot." Even in the safety of the wings, their whispered backstage chatter is still on broadcast. All that, and there's still that nagging concern about “going up.” The pressure is on.

“We began at the beginning of January, right when the students came back from winter break,” Musical Director Peter Isherwood said of the process. Because of the nature of a stage musical, potential performers had to have abilities in three different skills: dancing, acting, and singing.

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The preparation for the singing auditions began in December, as Isherwood, a music teacher for High School North, presented the material to the students. Those who wished to try out for the show were given a piece of music from the Cinderella score to memorize and to use as their audition piece. With musicals, the singing audition comes first, then acting, then callbacks.

Finally, the cast list is posted and rehearsals begin. Musical rehearsals are usually separate from staging/acting and conducted, at first, with piano accompaniment. The orchestra rehearses separately. In the final rehearsal phase, the orchestra comes together with the cast.

“The pit orchestra was put together at the end of January,” Isherwood said. “The vocalists have been practicing specifically (with it) for two weeks (prior to the full dress rehearsals), with three to four rehearsals running per week. The pit orchestra has been practicing once or twice a week.”

“We’ve had dress rehearsals since last Friday (April 1),” said Bennett. “We’ve been running through acts one and two separately since March 21.”

Victoria Joel, playing Cinderella for this production, informs director Patrice Thornton that she will be leaving a prop, a bundle of packages, at the back of the auditorium and will pick them up as part of the primary cast’s entrance. As the scene begins, Joel, along with Laura Bellini, Meghan Mahoney, and Emma Nuneviller (playing Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters, respectively) come in from the back of the theater to the stage, passing the audience as they go.

“This is a show that has a rather small number of principal roles,” said Thornton when asked about how many students vied for parts in the production. “There aren’t that many, so competition (among the students) for those principal roles was fairly pitched. It was fairly intense. However, once the show is cast, everybody battened down the hatches and they’ve had a really good time. They’ve done some really good work.”

The choice of what show will go on is a decision with many variables, Thornton explained: “It depends on the show. It depends on the year. Sometimes we know what show it is before the end of the (school) year, and at other times, we wait and decide in the fall (once the first semester has begun). It’s always decided as early in the year as possible, and then we apply for the rights to see if the show is available.”

The process of getting a show together, be it a high school production, a summer stock presentation, or a full-blown Broadway revival starts the same way – gaining the permission to use the play, which runs counter to a commonly held notion of the “let’s put on a show,” free-material notion.

These are copyrighted materials and payment for fair usage must be rendered. Also, productions might have non-competition clauses attached, so the rights to a show may be dependent on whether the play is or isn’t being done by another nearby organization.

“If (the show) is available,” continued Thornton, “we then apply for the rights, we’re given a quote as to how much it is going to cost, and we have the purchase order and the check set aside for that. We put in for it, say we want the scripts, the score and so on.”

Unless something is in the public domain, being a work that has fallen out of copyright protection over time and is, therefore, free from royalty collections, the rights require payment for usage as does the rental of scripts and scores. High School North worked with R&H Theatricals, a licensing company that oversees the Rogers and Hammerstein materials.

And, in spite of all that, the show must go on ... Not only is this a dress rehearsal, it's also what is referred to as a tech rehearsal: lighting cues, check ... audio, check ... props in place, check ... and, dim the lights ... move into the next scene.

The scene ends onstage and the lights go dark. The cast moves to the wings of the stage as the crew folds up and rolls away bits of scenery and props. Again, response times are taken into account and the understanding that the show needs to keep moving is key.

These are the kinks that get worked out during these final dress rehearsals. Strange chatter comes through the loudspeakers at intermittent, inopportune moments.  By the end of today’s session, the actors are reminded the microphones are always “live,” so, even offstage, they have to keep focused and, when not speaking dialogue, keep quiet.

“I call it the ‘power of positive panic,'” said Thornton. “Once the power of positive panic sets in, even those who might not have been into it at the start, they know that they’re going to be on that stage. Everybody wants to look good and everybody wants things to go well. So, everybody really winds up working together and doing really good stuff.

“You have your particular heads of elements; your heads of lighting, your stage manager, etc., but it is true that theater is truly the only cooperative art form. In order for a show to be successful, it takes everybody working together. I love working with them. They’re really terrific kids. They’re really a joy to work with.”

The run-through is completed and Thornton directs the students in how to handle the curtain call at the end. The clock reads a quarter after five and the students break straight from the stage to their dressing areas.

Tomorrow is another day of school, but it is another dress rehearsal and then show time. It's another chance to take what they’ve learned up to the moment and apply it to their performance — a metaphor for just about everything in life.

Middletown High School North’s general audience performances for Cinderella will start at 7 p.m. on April 8 and 8 p.m. on April 9. The April 9 matinee at 2 p.m. will begin after the Princess Tea event at 11:45 a.m. For more information, visit the High School North homepage: http://www.middletownk12.org/north/

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