Q&A by: Sam Behen
“Beauty and the Beast”, this year’s musical, began rehearsals at the end of September. Northmen News caught up with theatre teacher and director Jeff Baldwin to discuss the production’s beginnings. Check back next week to see photos of dress rehearsals as Northmen News covers the musical’s progression.
Northmen News: How was the musical “Beauty and the Beast” chosen?
Jeff Baldwin: “Well, the musical ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was chosen over a course of two months. We look at several different musicals. We look at what our students are capable of pulling off as far as vocally and acting, we look at whether or not we’re gender heavy, whether it’s males or females, and so we also look at orchestra to see how complex the orchestration for the musical is, so there’s a lot of components before you pick the musical, so in the end you pick the musical and you hope it’s going to be the right fit for the right students at the right time.”
NN: What is the audition process like?
JB: “The audition process is a week long process. On Monday we start out with singing auditions. Tuesday is acting, which means it’s like a cold read, we give you a script right before you walk on and you read a section of the script. Wednesday is choreography so we teach you like a 15 step routine and then you perform it. Thursday are call backs. Friday we post the call list.”
NN: Many people who auditioned were called back for different parts. Does this differ from previous years?”
JB: “No. It does not differ from previous years. Every year when we go into pulling people back for call backs, we’re looking at those people that we have questions on. Some individuals we already know who is going to play what part, but sometimes, though, you have six students, six actors and you don’t know who’s going to be who, so sometimes you have to call back multiple people to kind of figure out who’s going to be the best part for the show.”
NN: How did the first week of rehearsals go?
JB:“The first week of rehearsals went well. Usually we start it up as a small week because we didn’t have Monday, but Tuesday we did a lot of warm ups, a lot of team building. I like to think of the cast as a big family, so we talk about keeping up with academic work, expectations, you know, being able to rely on everybody. So, a lot of warm up, a lot of silly exercises and then on Wednesday we started blocking [stage directions]. I’m really excited to see where we’re heading.”
NN: What does a normal rehearsal look like?
JB: “A normal rehearsal, we start promptly at 2:30, you’ll have the cast deputy, which is this year [junior] Mariah Studebaker, she starts the cast in some sort of vocal or physical warm up to kind of get us mentally prepared and then from there, after the warm ups, everybody takes a seat and then we’ll pick up where we left off, and then we just slowly go page by page and then stop, go back to the beginning, we’ll rerun it, and we do this probably about a dozen time.”