Month: November 2017

SATs. Driver’s Licenses. Heelys. These three things plagued the junior year of my musical friends and me because our show that year was The Little Mermaid. The show included insane tricks, dance numbers, and stunts, all while on Heelys and trying to make ourselves seem as though we were underwater. The Little Mermaid was by far the craziest musical of my high school career, but the craziness and drama of this show helped forge some of my most important relationships in high school. The Little Mermaid, although an intense show in itself, includes important messages about family and is a classic Disney musical to be a part of.

The musical’s plot closely follows the plot of the movie, but characters like the mersisters, the eels, and Scuttle are characterized more deeply and are more involved with the plot. Ariel, the main character, is a mermaid who saves a drowning man at the beginning of the musical, and this experience and her immense curiosity of land causes her to desire to acquire legs and go to shore. She is tricked by Ursula to give up her voice in exchange for legs, and the only way to get her voice back is to have the man, Prince Eric, give her a kiss. The story follows her quest to get a kiss and save people from Ursula in the end.

In the musical itself, my favorite number was either “Under the Sea” or “Kiss the Girl.” In both of these numbers and the rest of the musical when we were underwater, many people were on Heelys to portray the idea that we were swimming. Originally, I was not supposed to be on Heelys, but someone broke their leg (while on Heelys), and I had to take their place (my mom was not excited). I had to learn to Heely in three weeks, and although it was a challenge given my balance and coordination issues, I eventually learned how to do it with the help of my friends. These dance numbers were some of my favorites, and the different tricks we had to do while on Heelys were crazy. However, we all learned that we were able to do so much more than we thought.

Overall, The Little Mermaid was one of the craziest, most stressful experiences that I had ever had in musical theatre, but it pushed me and the rest of the cast beyond our comfort zones. Because of the nature of our show, my friends and I grew closer, and this experience solidified our friendships from earlier years, which I will always be grateful for.

This past weekend, as some of you may know, State Theatre was featuring Rocky Horror Show. One of my friends from Pittsburgh suggested that we all go because she saw a version of it in Pittsburgh, and we figured why not? I had heard a little bit about it because I love the movie The Perks of Being a Wallflower (10/10 would recommend), and in this movie, some of the characters perform in Rocky Horror Show, so I was super excited to go see it and experience it. Basically, the plot follows a couple who are lost in the woods and taken to a place where a scientist and several strange characters live. It’s usually somewhat sexual but in a fun and lighthearted way.

Once we arrived at the theatre, we went to our seats and my friend who had seen it before started explaining to us what was about to happen. She expressed that there would be a movie playing in the background and the actors and actresses would perform in front of it and interact with the movie and the audience. We anxiously waited for the show to begin, but as it began we realized it was nothing like we had expected.

First of all, audience participation was limited to “callbacks,” which are little lines that people in the audience can yell at the actors after they say certain lines. For instance, people would yell, “Slut!” after an actor said the name of the main character, Janet. These were amusing for the most part, especially because several of the audience members had been in the show before, so they knew humorous responses to many of the lines. However, we were a little disappointed that there was not more audience participation like in the one my friend saw.

The next issue we had with the performance was that several of the actors and actresses did not act while they were singing, and it was visible that they broke character. Only a few of them had this issue, but it still was enough to make an impact. They also did not play the movie in the background, and according to my friend, they took several liberties with the script, including making it way more sexual than it normally is.

After it finished, we were all a little bit annoyed and grouchy because it was past 2 A.M., and overall the performance was not what we expected. I was originally going to write this blog to rant about the whole experience, but I realized when reflecting about it over the past few days that we should have been more open to change and new occurrences. I feel like we would have enjoyed it more if we had open minds about what it was going to be, so maybe in the future I will go see it again.