By Kendra Nixon
The Music Department refuses to go unnoticed during this year’s homecoming week. Their performance of the musical Into the Woods has been planned out and practiced to the tee over the past weeks, and they are prepared to impress their audience.
Audra Faust, the director of the musical, has organized everything from music rehearsals to characterization to staging the show.
“This is very difficult music and we needed to make sure the students knew it well before starting to stage the show,” Faust said. “About the first week of October we began staging the show. Rehearsals are pretty intense with only Wednesdays and Sundays off. These students have been very diligent and dedicated.”
A lot more goes into preparing for a play than one might think. In order to play a character, one must first become their character. Faust’s role as director is to get the students to dive into their roles.
“I asked them to make a folder for their character and fill it with pictures, articles, background essays, and other things to help them become that person on stage,” Faust said. “I asked questions like… ‘What would they eat’, ‘who are their parents’, ‘how would they walk’, ‘how do they brush their teeth’, ‘what kind of animal would their character be?’”
One student, Joe Burleigh, made a Facebook page for his character and showed his creativity through his posts.
After the students are familiarized with their roles, the staging process begins. Although the director has general guidelines as to where the cast enters the stage and how they move, she encourages the students to bring their own ideas to the rehearsals. Faust shares her vision of where she is taking the show with the cast, but wants them to bring their own nuances to their characters as well.
“We hope the audience will feel like they are getting swept into the woods with the cast as well,” Faust said. She decided on this particular play because she thought it went well with the recent fantasy trend. “Fairy tales are huge right now with television shows and movies that have recently come out. This production has almost every fairy tale character you can think of, all combined together in a twisting plot. I’m hopeful that this fairy tale craze will bring more people to our show.”
Into the Woods opening production will be Wednesday, November 7th at 10 a.m. in Herrick Auditorium and will be performed the following Thursday, Friday and Saturday.