The Maple River drama club will be performing the play Beetlejuice for the public on November, 7, 8 and 9 at 7 p.m. with a special matinee performance on the 9t at 2 p.m. From auditions to opening night, many hours of planning and practice go into the production.
Director Steve Conover explained the process of selecting a script: “When I'm picking a script, a couple things play into mind. You know, I look at a number of kids that I have, how many males, how many females? If I think that I'm going to have a large group of unknowns show up that kind of plays into it, and then we start looking at scripts that we think will fit their vocal range. For one, we've been doing a lot of the junior (versions of plays) lately, just because we've had a lot of young cast, and they're kind of made for younger voices. And this was the first year we're going to go with a full length musical.
Conover said that after working with the program for so long, “We have the talent, the kids are maturing. They can handle it, voice wise.” Conover originally had a different full-length play picked out, but due to “unforeseen circumstances,” they were going to have to once again switch to the junior version of it.
“But in the interim, Beetlejuice became available, and we've been wanting to do that once for a couple years now. So… we snagged it up.”
Of course, before any actors can take the stage, they must first have auditions. Layne Davis, a senior, explained how the process works.
“When auditioning, we normally just come here after school, auditions will start, and Steve will just get out, like a bunch of random scenes from the play we're gonna do. And then you might read one character, take like a 10 minute break, go read another character, and just keep doing random scenes.” Lydia Hellekson offered her experience, “So I messed up a lot because, well, we're just like, going through lines and stuff that we don't know anything about. For Aaron Hull, the process was old hat. “Well, I've done community theater, and I feel like that's very different from what we do here. Here, they give us all of our materials. So, like, they'll give us our song that we need to sing. They'll give us a bunch of different scenes to work on. We'll get, like, a sheet of paper that we can put down, like, our name, our email, all of that stuff. And then we also get to choose and like, prioritize what characters we would like to have, and then we just, like, run through everything that we need to do, and then Ms. Conover and Steve, take that into consideration.” For Ella Olson, the process of auditioning has been a mixed bag of results, “It really just depends on the show. If I know it very well, I'm happy with it, then I do much better. But like so like with Beetlejuice, I feel like I did very well. In other ones where I don't think, where I don't remember or know the production very well, I just, I just don't do as well.”
Once the parts are assigned, then comes the more challenging part of memorizing the lines.
Olson explained her strategy, “Mainly I just like, I've carried my script around multiple times just with me in the scenes. And then once I start getting a feel for the scenes’ mood and all that, I start reading the line as I would, and then I just doing it multiple times. Makes me memorize it.
For Layne Davis, it’s much simpler: “Repetition. Repetition is just what needs to happen. Like I remember for that one act, that same One Act, it was, I was waiting for my mom to get a haircut. I had my script out in the car, just running lines, because you just got to get them down somehow.” Director Steve Conover offers a game to help his cast learn the script. “I play a little game with them, just it's more of a focus. ‘Know, your Lions kind of trick’ . And I'll have them circle up, and I'll throw a ball out, and the person who has the ball has the line, and then they have to throw it to the next person who has a line, who has to throw it to the next person who has a line. And we do the whole show in a circle, throwing a ball back and forth. You have to be aware enough to catch it and say your line. And so you really can't think too much about it, and you're still trying to do physical activity there on top of it. Fnally, they get that down, then we speed it up.”
So what should we expect from Beetlejuice? Musical Director Jessica Conover answered, “Oh, it's just a really fun production. And this is one, I think it's kind of for the kids. They were really excited to do it, and they're having a great time. So I'm looking forward to that.
Ella Olson explained her part in the production: “I'm Lydia, the main female, female role, and it's like this 15 year old, just angsty teenager who's like being dragged around by her dad and just being dragged to this new house, and she doesn't like it at all because her family had just been torn apart by the loss of her mother. And so with that, she's just moody and doesn't really want to get along with her father and her father's friend, Delia. And so she just is kind of going on an adventure to do whatever she can to go home.” Despite last minute decisions, Director Steve Conover is enthused about the production. “WIth Beetlejuice Junior, I absolutely love the music. It's a little tongue in cheek. It's a show about death, and we don't hold back. In fact, we have a song called, “it's a Show about Death.” It's kind of how we started off. And this is just music and kind of the actors, how they have you can just watch them and see how much fun they're having together, doing this, this musical as it comes together. It's kind of fun!”
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