Senior actress Josie Butler is most excited, yet scared, for the audience of this year’s musical.
“We’re going to have people every night, in the matinee, that are going to come up and spell, and I’m so excited,” Josie said. “[But] you don’t know how that’s going to go when you’re just calling up people and there’s certain parts when people have to get it wrong, so we just have to keep going until it happens.”
This year’s musical production from FHC’s theater department is based on competition amongst little kids who are entered into a spelling bee with the goals of winning and heading to nationals. With this, the audience of each night will be actual contestants in this production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
Audience members will have the opportunity to, at the start of the show, have their names added to a list which will then possibly be picked during the performance, making them spellers, where they will come up on stage, and spell ridiculous words that will shift the way the show goes.
When members of the audience come up to spell on stage, the cast of the show will be forced to improv during their performance, and theater director Jessi Dykstra is excited for the new feel this will bring to the overall performance.
“It’s a different vibe of a musical than we’ve done before,” Dykstra said. “It’s super funny, light-hearted, breaking the fourth wall, whereas a lot more [musicals are] more story-driven, this one is a lot more entertainment-driven.”
The entertainment of this storyline will allow the cast to bring more of themselves into their roles, especially those whose personalities do not necessarily match up with the characters they have been cast in.
One actress who is playing a rather contradicting role is senior actress Paige Harsevoort who is playing Oliver Ostrovskey.
“[Oliver] is a sort of shy 12-year-old who kind of has trouble making friends and is pretty reserved,” Paige said. “I think that this role has kind of been a challenge for me, just because I’m not used to playing someone who is shy and reserved, so it’s been a struggle, but it’s also been really fun to kind of explore playing someone that’s super different from me.”
Josie, Rona in the musical, also plays a role that is not entirely her but has found enjoyment in it.
“[She] is like the commentator, and there’s a lot of improv involved with her role, which I’m very excited about,” Josie said. “In some ways [I feel like I fit my role,] she likes to be in charge of things, but she likes to be very by the book, which is not me.”
Even in characters they are not used to playing, this group of actors and actresses has developed a tight-knit bond that allows them to work together and portray their roles perfectly.
Despite any complications of something new, the cast has been dedicating themselves to the show, and junior Keegan Redmond, who plays Chip Tolentino, is ready to make sure everything goes the way it needs to.
“We’ve been rehearsing every single day,” Keegan said. “We’ve been doing music rehearsals, blocking, acting rehearsals, and then also [working on] choreography and just getting all the numbers down and making sure the show flows smoothly.”
This year’s musical performance of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee will be shown on March 21, 22, and 23, and it is one that will be worth seeing no matter your spelling abilities.
With the implementation of improv, audience participation, singing, dancing, acting, and humor, Keegan believes that this different vibe of a musical will be engaging to the audience, making it something enjoyable for all.
“It’s a really funny show,” Keegan said. “It’s a lot of more adult humor, [and] it’s nothing like we’ve done in the past. A lot of our other shows, like in the previous years, like The Wizard of Oz, have been more aimed towards kids, and the same with Cinderella, but this one is definitely more aimed towards people our age with more adult humor. So, I think that’s going to be really funny for a lot of people.”
