Musical season at Jonathan Alder is up and running again. This school year, the musical is “The Drowsy Chaperone.” The musical dates are March 12th through the 15th and auditions will be Dec. 2 and 3.
Since the musical had so much success last year with “Hadestown,” their process with choosing this year’s musical was very precise.
Choir teacher and musical director Nicholas Mayes says, “We went through so many different musicals this year. We went through like over 150 musicals. It took a while. We were very diplomatic about it [because] people are going to expect a lot from us.”
“The Drowsy Chaperone” is a meta-musical, which means the actors are aware they are in the musical. The premise is that a present day musical fan plays his favorite songs to get away from his feelings, and it comes to life. The musical displays reality vs fantasy and themes of humor.
Mayes says that the tone of the show was one of the factors in their decision. “We said, what’s funny, but well written? And we said, this musical is perfect. It is like classic slapstick humor, [but] It’s very well written.”
Another benefit, he says, is it also has a lot of roles for the students
An issue that students were talking about last year was that we had too many people that wanted to participate in the musical, but the musical itself was too small of a cast.
Sophomore Allison Moran says, “I do think that we’ve always adapted if we didn’t have the right cast, but I think we have a pretty good cast for this year so I think it’s gonna be good.”
In years past, the Jonathan Alder musical program has had many major successes similar to “Hadestown,” like “Newsies,” “Anything Goes,” and “Shrek.”
Sophomore Lilly Overmyer says, “As a person who’s gone to many musicals in the past, I think they have just gotten better every year and I love how hard the cast works to make them better each year.”
They are doing a practice round the day before auditions. The practice round will help students recognize what they will have to do for actual auditions to prepare themselves, and interested students should talk to Mr. Mayes.
