| Muir Musical
Puts Students in the Spotlight — and Behind
It
Ioana Patringenaru | April 23, 2007
"Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
Fremde, etranger, stranger.
Glüklich zu sehen, je suis enchanté,
Happy to see you, bleibe, reste, stay
Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome
Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret."
Trevor Peringer, a Muir College student, had put on his best German accent, and quite a bit of make-up, to sing the opening lines from the musical “Cabaret” this month on campus. He wore a sleeveless vest as he sashayed on stage at Mandeville Auditorium during a rehearsal. A small orchestra played behind him. Four scantily clad dancers flirted with cabaret costumers sitting at small café tables.
Peringer and about 80 fellow students were getting ready to put on the Muir musical, a 15-year-old campus tradition. Students pick a different play each year. Then they perform, direct and design sets as well as costumes. This year, they put on “Cabaret” from April 12 to 14.
The goal is to give students who aren’t theater and dance majors an opportunity to take part in a performance, said Patricia Mahaffey, Muir’s dean of student affairs. Students also get a chance to step up and take on leadership roles, she said. The skills students learn, such as team work, will serve them well later in life, said Theater Professor Steven Adler. “But beyond that, it increases their awareness and respect for the vitality of musical theater as an exuberant and quintessentially American art form,” said Adler, who acts as the musical’s de-facto faculty advisor.
|
| Noelle Goodman-Morris at a dress rehearsal. Several actors just kissed her at the end of the play, leaving lipstick marks on her cheeks. She then picked scenes requiring additional rehearsal. |
 Click here to view the slide show. |
|
That feeling of respect has been with Noelle Goodman-Morris since childhood. The theater and dance major directed “Cabaret” this year. Her parents are Presbyterian ministers and her mother, Cheryl Goodman-Morris, runs a small theater in the San Francisco Bay Area out of the family’s church. Noelle made her debut there. She was Hero in “Much Ado About Nothing,” Lola in “Damn Yankees” and Lucy in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”
“The arts are really important to me,” she said.
At first, she thought she wanted to be a dancer.
Later, she fell in love with working backstage. She
choreographed her first Muir musical three years ago.
Then she moved on to directing. She said she decided
to put on “Cabaret” because she feels
the play is relevant today. “It’s a really
political show,” she said. The musical takes
place before the Nazi’s rise to power in Germany.
Many of the characters don’t want to get involved
with the politics of the day. Today, students are
aware of what is happening in the world, but many
are wrapped-up in their own lives, she said. She added
she hopes the audience left the theater feeling a
little uncomfortable.
On a recent Tuesday afternoon during a technical rehearsal, Goodman-Morris greeted actors backstage, a clipboard in hand. The musical’s crew was setting up a minimalist set, mostly made up of small black café tables and chairs, doors and curtains. The director soon reappeared in the audience to talk to her technical crew, who were running light and sound checks. Suddenly, a bulb broke on stage and set designer Giao-Chau Ly called out “we need a broom.” Goodman-Morris jogged onto the stage and did some of the sweeping herself. Finally, around 7:30 p.m., stage manager Amanda Salmons called the cast to the stage. “Actors, can you be in character,” Goodman-Morris asked.
During rehearsals, students sometimes struggled to
connect with older characters from a different time
period, the director said. Benton Sheely, a theater
major, said she tried to figure out what she had in
common with her character, singer Sally Bowles. Bowles
doesn’t want people to see her inner self and
has set up defense mechanisms, Sheely said. To better
relate, the student started thinking about how she
set up barriers to protect herself. “I’ve
never fallen in love with a character as much as I
did with Sally,” Sheely said. “She goes
from being overly dramatic to being very sincere and
everything in between.” In real life, Bowles
and the student are fairly different. The “Cabaret”singer
is British and performs provocative numbers. Sheely
comes from a small town in Central California, where
she attended a small Christian school. Her parents
are farmers.
|
| Four dancers perform during a dress rehearsal. |
|
During Tuesday night’s technical rehearsal, Sheely seemed to cast these differences aside convincingly, as she sang on stage in brassy tones and flirted with the play’s other main character, Clifford Bradshaw, played by Daniel Neethling, an aerospace engineering major.
In an interesting twist, Sheely, who originally trained as an actress and opera singer, is now contemplating a career in musical theater. She plans to move to New York this summer, where she will either go to graduate school or work as a waitress and hope to land acting gigs, she said. Meanwhile, Goodman-Morris will head back to the Bay Area, where she will teach children’s theater and intern with a theater in Santa Cruz. She applied for several assistant director positions on the East Coast and hopes to hear back soon.
The director said she was pleased with “Cabaret”'s run. Actors performed for a packed house the last two nights. “Everything came together nicely,” she said. “I’m glad that it’s wrapped up and it ended on a really nice note.” |
