Fitting A Shoe To A Show (And By Shoe, I Mean Glass Slipper)
Hello, viewer!
In complete honesty, I did not make much progress on my musical this past week. Two things kept me busy. One was my last ever Science Olympiad tournament which was bittersweet since I had been in the club since 7th grade. The other was watching and being a part of Places! Production’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella: Youth Edition! Now that I have watched a real show of both casts I was not in, mini and senior, I can report my findings on the differences from the perspective of an audience member.
For background, this show was a youth show and thus divided into three casts. Mini was made up of the kids, junior comprised of mostly younger teens, and senior comprised of the older ones. A few kids were sprinkled into junior and senior to be mice. I was in junior cast since my double in senior cast is my age, but she’s also taller than I am. Curse being short, but I absolutely loved being in junior cast for a change since I was in senior cast for Mary Poppins Jr. Junior and senior were directed by the same person, my mentor Breona Conrad! Mini however had a separate director.
I already mentioned how the mini cast was more often moving on stage than the older casts. They were even doing dance moves in between scene changes! There were also plenty of dance solos for the kids who had more dance experience. Even with those solos taking place though, everyone else was doing some sort of movement in the back. I struggled as well in Annie to keep the kids’ focus when they weren’t dancing or moving; they want to get to the good stuff. I noticed the difference between watching mini and senior. The stage in mini felt alive through consistent action while the senior stage felt most alive when the moves they did have were synchronized and expressive.
When the minis did have background interaction though, it was very fun to watch. I noticed that they usually grouped with the same people to make banter, and they were having fun while doing it! It’s always a good idea to introduce a bit of background acting for them to practice for when they’re older.
The mini cast didn’t lack very much in expression either. A notable moment was during the song “Stepsisters’ Lament” where all the maidens are jealous that the prince is in love with Cinderella. For the kids being so young, they seemed passionately angry about this romantic situation! Numbers where kids can get fired up seem to be the best to have them practice expressions!
In return for having less movement, the junior and senior casts got to play with a lot more nuance. For the mini cast, if this makes sense, the characters were played as they were written in the script. Like how you would picture their personalities in the classic tale of Cinderella. As we rehearsed in the older casts though, we had table meetings discussing the relationships between our characters. I had the challenge with my friend who played the king to make all our exchanges friendly banter since Breona wanted us to be a loving couple. In the script, the king and queen are more portrayed as a bickering couple, so this was an interesting route to take. We even got so deep as to establish that the king and herald have a secret signal to play DnD every night! That being said, it seems for shows with younger kids, it may be better to strictly define personalities in the script; something I’m having a challenge with!
Props also helped the mini cast! They really make any scene feel more alive for younger ones. During the number “In My Own Little Corner” where the ensemble plays Cinderella’s fantasies, the mini cast had props to help them with their characters since we didn’t have time for costume changes. For example, the milkmaid got a bucket and the Primadonna got some sunglasses. In junior and senior, we had to define each character instead with our movements. Our milkmaid curtsied like a country bumpkin and our Primadonna gave some hilarious side-eyes. It was very interesting to see that difference in action as well!
I could go on for much longer, but I’ll leave it there. Overall, I think a lot of the choices in the mini cast were to bring up the adorableness for the audience and get them more engaged. Even though they’re just kids, the mini cast felt professional. It excelled as a kids’ production and even as a normal musical. I will hopefully be updating you on my own kids’ musical soon!
Take seven till next post.
Photo credit: Josie Poehls
Photo credit: Josie Poehls
Photo credit: Josie Poehls
Photo credits: Josie Poehls and Kara Hutchinson
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